


Yield

by OughtaKnowBetter



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Adventure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-09-23
Updated: 2010-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OughtaKnowBetter/pseuds/OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don and his team are called out to investigate a murder of a not so prominent researcher. Who's the real target?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Usual Disclaimer: They own all. I own nothing except an over-active imagination and the hope that people will like this little offering.

"Bless you."

"Thank you." Charlie wiped at his nose with a handkerchief. There was nothing in the conference room in the research facility of Caldwell International to trigger allergies, but the building was located in the eastern California mountains and it was the middle of autumn with leaves falling. Allergens were happy to slip in through the various windows to sow havoc and despair among those afflicted with hay fever. "Show me those numbers again?"

"You've already seen them twice, buddy," Don complained mildly. "There's nothing there. Dr. Halligan got in the way. She was not the target. There was no reason to kill her."

"I don't know how you can say that, Don," Charlie disagreed, peering blearily at the paper in front of him. More papers were tossed carelessly around the massive table, most with the chicken scratches known as Charlie's handwriting upon them. "If the angle of bullet entry is accurate, and you say that we have an eye witness account that Dr. Halligan was standing upright exactly four feet three inches from the window—"

"Got a scuff mark on the floor to prove it. And we measured the distance twice. _And_ the local crime lab re-constructed the broken window."

"—then Dr. Halligan was the target." Charlie leaned back in his chair, satisfied. And sneezed again.

"Bless you. Didn't you take those anti-histamines I gave you? Dr. Halligan may have gotten in the way, but she was not the target. Dr. Bostwick was. He was standing right behind her, and he's the one with the price on his head. He's the lead researcher on Formula K-19. She was an also ran. And why do your numbers not match up with Rufus's? You're both working with the same evidence."

Charlie shrugged. "He's of the opinion that ballistics theory is pertinent. It isn't."

"A little explanation, for those of us without your erudition?"

Charlie looked at his brother with amusement. "'Erudition'?"

"What, I can't use proper English? I went to college, too, Charlie."

"I know that, Don. It's just, you, um, you—"

"Don't bother to stupefy and enthrall my listeners with witty prose? Is that it?" Don grinned to take the sting out of the words.

"Well…yeah."

"And is 'yeah' proper English?" Don needled. The grin got wider. "Do you use 'yeah' with your students, Dr. Eppes?"

Charlie broke down, grinning himself. " _Yeah_. Finished changing the subject?"

"Hey, I could probably keep this up for another six minutes at least. And it'll give the antihistamines a chance to kick in so that you're not sneezing every two seconds. Can't take you anywhere," Don told him, the affection for his brother obvious. "Good thing you didn't come out to visit me in New Mexico. Lots of dust and cattle out that way."

"I'm getting my share right now in eastern California," Charlie acknowledged. "Now, you were asking about ballistics theory?"

"Only if it will advance my understanding of who shot Dr. Halligan when Dr. Bostwick was the target."

"Dr. Bostwick was not the target. Dr. Halligan was."

"Rufus's numbers say otherwise, brother mine, as does the entire staff of Caldwell International. And don't take the easy route by telling me that your Ph.D. trumps his bachelor's degree. That's cheating."

"Rufus Gordon thinks that ballistics theory applies. It doesn't. Want me to explain?"

"No, but I'd better listen anyway. What's ballistics theory?"

Charlie settled in for the explanation. The antihistamines were finally working, Don noted, and hoped that the sleepy side effects would make Charlie less long-winded than usual.

"Ballistics looks at the trajectory of bombs," was the opening salvo. "Think of the old cannons, Civil War stuff. When they fired a bomb, that bomb didn't travel in a straight line. It traveled in an arc, and the people firing the bomb had to account for that arc in order to deliver the bomb where they wanted it. Gravity pulled down on the object being fired."

"And gravity pulls down on all objects."

"Right. There's a whole body of science that looks at exactly what path those bombs follow. That's Ballistics, in a nutshell. They used it back in the Civil War, and the military uses it to deliver missiles to the desired location even today. A simplified explanation, but it still applies."

"So why doesn't it apply here?"

Charlie warmed to his subject. "Technically, it does. But the power of the average rifle is so great that the effect is negligible over short distances. The sniper rifle is about as powerful as you can get; a great deal of energy acting upon a small mass. In effect, the bullet from a rifle goes in a straight line until it impinges on its target. If it were to travel a lot farther then yes, it would begin to demonstrate the effects of gravity and curve downward until it hit something; the ground, for instance. The angle of entry into Dr. Halligan's body refutes that possibility. It went directly in, went in straight. From that we can calculate where the sniper was. Unless he cleaned up after himself, you should be able to recover the casings from the bullet at the distance that I calculated." Charlie sat back, and sneezed again.

"Bless you," Don said automatically, looking up as his team walked into the conference room. He greeted them with more pleasure than usual; their entrance interrupted Charlie's lecture and cut it off. "You find anything in the sniper's nest? More to the point, did you _find_ the sniper's nest?"

The FBI agents had all dressed for the occasion. Caldwell International's research facility was located some two hundred miles away from Los Angeles, well to the northeast and in an area that reminded Don fondly of his years in New Mexico. He'd been stationed in Albuquerque but both business and pleasure frequently took him outside the city confines and into the back country. This wasn't quite the same, but similar enough that it evoked almost a feeling of home sickness. Pleasant memories, for the most part. So his team had carefully dressed in clothing that would serve them well in the forested region of eastern California: jeans and hiking boots that would stand up to mud and muck. Heavy jackets did double duty, armoring them against both the chilly mountainous autumn air and the slender branches that offered to lacerate unprotected skin when trailing after a sniper who preferred to hide himself on the tree-laden slopes above the research facility.

Don himself, as leader of the team called out to investigate the murder of one researcher/attempt on another, was required to be in more formal threads than his team to meet with the administration of Caldwell, although he'd already promised himself to change into comfortable jeans as soon as possible. David Sinclair and Colby Granger had already dressed down, with a pointed grin in Don's direction, in order to investigate the supposed sniper's nest in the hills above the Research building, as had their tag along, Rufus Gordon.

Don remembered very clearly the conference call he'd had with both Area Director D'Angelo and Area Director Thomas about Rufus Gordon.

" _You've had a great deal of success with your professional consultant in math, Eppes," Thomas had said. "I've followed your work, and the credit you've given to him."_

" _Thank you, sir. We try to use whatever resources are available and appropriate. I'm fortunate to be able to use my connections."_

" _I'm looking to expand that program of yours in my own jurisdiction, looking to hire agents with a background in math who can serve as both a technical resource as well as field agents," Thomas told him. "I found a candidate who just graduated from Quantico. He has a couple of years of experience in the military, went to college on the GI Bill, and then headed off to Quantico. Looks pretty promising."_

" _Okay…" Don had drawled, wondering why not one but two Area Directors, including his own, had taken the time to discuss their plans with him._

" _I'd like you to evaluate him, Eppes." Thomas finally came to the point. "I'd like to have my own math whiz, one with a little more on the ball than a mere consultant. I'd like to be able to use him in the field as well. Take Gordon on for a month or two, break him in. You up for it?"_

Was he up for it? With his own Area Director listening in, Special Agent Don Eppes had better be up for whatever was wanted.

Which was how Rufus Gordon ended up tagging along on this case. Five men meant two vehicles for the four hour drive, because Don didn't intend to evaluate Gordon's math skills himself. Investigative skills, sure, but Don was proud to acknowledge his brother's expertise to everyone except his brother. _Gotta keep up a pretense of sibling rivalry_. And shoving five grown men into one car was not something that Don was going to do. Not for a four hour drive with several larger than average agents.

Rufus Gordon more than measured up physically to Area Director Thomas's wishes: taller than Don himself and at least as broad in the shoulders. 'Greek God' was Megan's description, when Don overheard her on the phone. He'd declined to question the profiler further, figuring that his own ego couldn't take much more. Half the women in the clerical pool were swooning over the man as soon as he walked into the Los Angeles FBI headquarters, and a nameless someone had let him know that some of the men were smitten as well. Don decided on the spot that he didn't want to know Gordon's sexual preferences. There were some things better left unknown.

Intelligent? A given. An earned bachelor's degree in math was nothing to be sneezed at, despite being from a college that he'd never heard of. Charlie had assured him that the man was educated, that the college was for real. Charlie had apparently had some dealings with some of the professors at that place, and vouched for them. And Gordon's records affirmed that the man was as physically fit as any of them. As Colby commented, "it's enough to give me an inferiority complex."

Back to business. Don pulled his attention away from the trainee to the rest of his team coming in from the forested slopes. David Sinclair shrugged out of his leather jacket, dropping into a chair, a pleased expression on his face. "Got the sniper's nest, boss. Picked up the casings; I'll have them couriered back to L.A. for analysis. Looks custom. We should get some leads there."

"Where did you find them?" Charlie asked, shooting a significant look at his brother.

David seemed uncomfortable. He glanced toward Rufus. "Pretty close to where you said, Charlie."

" _How_ close?"

David looked at Colby; no help there. "A little further back," he admitted reluctantly. _Right where Rufus had predicted_ , no one added.

"Impossible," Charlie said flatly. "Not unless the numbers you gave me are inaccurate on the victim's location and bullet wound. Or if someone moved the casings."

"Why would anyone do that?" Rufus asked reasonably. He shrugged. "From the looks of it, the guy took his shot and ran. We found tire tracks on a dirt road a few hundred yards away."

"We're sending the tire tracings back to L.A. for analysis, too," Colby added unnecessarily.

"Good." Don moved past the uncomfortable moment. Charlie made a mistake. He'd mis-calculated the position of the sniper. Had to happen eventually. Wish it hadn't been now, not in front of the new boy that Charlie was supposed to evaluate, but couldn't be helped. "Let's get organized on this. David, follow up with stuff we're sending back. Colby, I want you to coordinate with Caldwell security; check out the arrangements they've got on Dr. Bostwick. Division of labor: we're going to track down the assassin, and they'll handle the personal security issues and keep Bostwick safe as long as the sniper is at large. They up to it?"

"Their people sound good so far," Colby told him. "I'll check on the details."

"Do that. I'm going to talk to Bostwick himself, along with that chief exec, what's his name? Stewart? Rufus, you're with me. You too, Charlie," he added, not quite certain what to do with his brother and temporizing that Charlie needed to see Rufus in action in order to evaluate him. So far, Rufus was one up on Charlie. The report to Area Director Thomas would be a positive one.

Dr. Bostwick was in the conference room, waiting for Don to get around to him. Barry Stewart, the CEO, was there with him, along with a couple of security guards. Don glanced at the security people in passing: tall stalwart types, little nonsense on their faces and guns at their hips. They may have been hired security, but Caldwell International was not taking any chances with their lead researcher. Don approved; from what little he knew, the stuff that Caldwell was working on could have international implications. Charlie trailed after him. Rufus would be along in a moment, having taken a detour to clean up the dirt from outside.

Don let the head of Security, Rosa Nogales, make the introductions, putting in his share to add Charlie's name to the mix.

William Bostwick brightened. "Ah, the same Dr. Charles Eppes at CalSci who proposed the secondary equation analysis on Prisoner's Dilemma?"

Charlie flushed, but grinned. "That was a long time ago, Dr. Bostwick."

"Please, call me Bill. No, that was brilliant work. Almost persuaded me to go back for more courses in statistics."

"And we already had our hooks into him," Stewart chimed in. "That was around the time of the beginning of Formula K-19. We weren't about to let Bill get distracted."

Don looked the CEO over carefully. This was the man with the Washington connections, the one who had pulled strings to get the FBI team out here. Don wondered what exactly was going on. Caldwell had its own security, and for the head man to request federal assistance? There would clearly be a lot more inter-office politics than he'd find out in this meeting. Stewart himself was nothing much to look at: small in stature and balding, but kept himself in shape. The clothes he wore suggested a man amply compensated for his labors, someone well accustomed to flying back and forth to D.C. to meet with whomever needed meeting with. He wouldn't mention the appraising look that Stewart gave Don himself. Don smiled tightly. Not a man to underestimate in any sense of the word.

"The heart of the matter," Don said. "What, exactly, is Formula K-19?"

"I can't give you the exact formulation—" Stewart began.

"Why not?"

"Two reasons:" Stewart ticked them off on his fingers. "One: trade secret. We haven't even applied for a patent yet for fear it will leak out through government fingers." He dared Don to object. Don declined, knowing that the company executive had a valid point. "Two: personally, I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. The chemistry is beyond me. But, if successful and it looks to be a strong possibility that we will be, we will be able to enhance grain production around the world to the point where starvation will become a distant memory."

"Which is why we were called in," Don acknowledged. "Pretty lofty goals."

Stewart agreed. "There were some suggestions made at very high levels that requested your input into this situation. To put it bluntly, the world cannot afford to lose William Bostwick. Not with a potentially global application about to become a reality."

"This is embarrassing," Bostwick muttered, trying not to preen. Don spared the researcher a glance. The scientist appeared increasingly uncomfortable at the praise. Yet Don couldn't shake the feeling that Bostwick enjoyed it more than he would like others to know.

"It's true, Bill," Stewart insisted. "We have Bill's notes, but not the whole technique. It would be too dangerous to commit everything to one document. So far, Bill is the only one to be able to get the process to work."

"Alyce Halligan was just about there," Bostwick reminded Stewart. "Another week, and she could have run a test production line as well as I could."

"Yes, well, that's all in the past. Bottom line, we need help." Stewart gestured at Nogales. "No disrespect to you, Rosa—"

"None taken," the head of security said calmly. Another glance from Don; this time the words spoken were a lie. His gut knew it as sure as he knew he was an FBI agent.

"—but we're not experts in tracking these things down. We'll provide security; we need experts to find out and stop whoever's trying to put us out of business. You have our full cooperation, Agent Eppes."

"Thank you." Don turned to Rufus, who had just entered the room, and introduced him. "Another member of my team, Agent Gordon. He'll be assisting Dr. Eppes and myself." He came back to the target topic. "You said that your process will solve world hunger. How?"

"Grain production." Dr. Bostwick took over from Stewart. "My process is designed to reap maximum production from a single field of wheat, could double and possibly triple the amount of wheat grains from each stalk grown. And there's some evidence that my process could be extended to other food crops, to improve food production dramatically." He paused for effect. "Think of a single corn stalk. One stalk might produce anywhere from one to three ears. Now imagine if that same stalk grew three to six ears in a single season with no additional resources, no added fertilizer or water or anything else. Would that be a process worth investigating?"

"That sounds incredible," Charlie put in. "You can generate that sort of yield?"

"I invite you to look at my numbers, Dr. Eppes," Bostwick said, pleased.

"Thank you. I'd like that."

"That's your angle, Charlie." Don delegated that part gratefully. "Rufus, follow him." _Learn how Charlie works_. _It's okay to get out of my hair for a bit_. "Mr. Stewart, my interest is in who might not want this process to go forward. It seems like this would be a good thing for the world. Who wouldn't want you to succeed?"

"We have competition," Stewart admitted, following the trio with his eyes as Bostwick led Charlie and Agent Gordon out to his own office for a more science-oriented discussion. "Caldwell is not the only player in the field. Others would welcome a chance to get in on the ground floor, be the first with this process. Eliminating Dr. Bostwick would be an easy and fast way to leave us behind. Dr. Halligan's loss is felt as well, but not to the same extent."

"Can you give us the names of some of your competitors? We'll check them out."

"Gladly." Stewart checked his watch. "I'll have my administrative assistant prepare a list for you. You have our full cooperation, Special Agent Eppes. Anything you need, simply ask. Now, if you don't mind? I have a meeting with my head of personnel." He grimaced. "I find I suddenly have a vacancy among my professional staff." He turned thoughtful. "Your brother wouldn't happen to know any Ph.D.'s in biochemistry looking for a job in agricultural chemistry, would he? We have an excellent benefits package."

"I'll ask him. And I'll need to arrange a few discussions of my own with your people." Don had his own meetings in mind. Like with a miffed head of security, still sitting across the table from him. "Ms. Nogales? Care to show me around?"

"Gladly." The woman echoed Stewart's own word, only with a healthy helping of ice.

 _Uh-oh._ _Is she pissed because she thinks we'll make her look bad, or is there something else?_


	2. Chapter 2

"The research lab." Still stiff. Still pissed. Rosa Nogales barely came up to Don's shoulder but he recognized the wiry strength in that lithe body. This was not a mere figurehead filling out this position; this was someone not afraid to get her hands dirty. He glanced at her hands: no, no dirt but no manicure, either. No long, artificial nails with gleaming gems and artistic pictures. And the long black hair was coiled up into a twist to keep it out of her way. Flats to run in when needed, not high-heeled shoes, despite the height disadvantage. There would be large sums of money floating around somewhere in this case, that he was convinced of, but where ever the money was, it wasn't being spent on baubles for Nogales' fingers. On the other hand, this was a woman who, if she thought she needed to do it, would take out anyone and anything in her way. Don resolved to question David and Colby about the sniper's nest: any possibility that it had contained a woman? Don would just bet that Nogales could shoot the wing off a housefly at thirty paces. He trusted his gut on this one. Oh, yeah, he should question Rufus, too, as well as David and Colby. Rufus was part of the team for now.

This tour was necessary, but boring. Don looked inside through the corridor windows into the laboratory proper. Figures in white coveralls scurried here and there, pouring fluids from one beaker to the next, pipetting solutions into massive steel-colored machines for analysis. He blinked; he wouldn't recognized one machine from the next. This sort of science was beyond him, and he really hoped that understanding wouldn't be necessary to crack this case. It was hard to tell one worker from the next, bundled up as they were in white.

"It's a clean room," Nogales explained. "In order to get in there, you have to go through a decontamination chamber, to remove any foreign particle that might screw up the process for weeks." The tone of her voice suggested that she thought that Don would likely be bull-headed enough to do just that on general principles. "You change into clean room attire before going in. Our people check each person going in and coming out."

"For decontamination? Is that a security issue? I thought it would be a bio-hazard type of thing."

She looked balefully at him, all but accusing him of stupidity. "We work with precious metals as part of the process. We check for pilferage. Gold, platinum, things like that. Those are precious metals," she added, as if Don didn't know.

All right, one last chance for this woman to establish a working relationship with the visiting agents. The Ice Maiden routine was getting old. "Tell me about Dr. Halligan," Don requested, keeping his temper in check. "What files do you have on her? Any chance that this might not be related to work?"

Another liquid nitrogen glance. "Dr. Halligan had no life outside of her work."

"None at all? No friends, no family?"

"Single. Spent an average of twelve hours at her job, including Saturdays. Sundays she would come here to the research facility, borrow one of the horses, and go riding in the back country."

"Ah. Anybody know where she went in the back country?"

"No. The horse was ridden well and properly cared for. The one time her mount came up lame, she walked it back."

"Hm." A clue to Halligan's character. She cared about her animal, wouldn't put it through unnecessary discomfort for her own convenience. Don approved, but it didn't seem to be adding anything toward solving this case. "You knew her well?"

"Nobody knew her well. She kept to herself."

"Okay." Note to self: have someone back in L.A. run a background check on Alyse Halligan along with the suspects. "I'll need to get into her place, take a look around. Just in case," he added. "Not that I expect to find anything, but it keeps the reports tidy. You have her address in your files?"

"Of course." And, wonder of wonders, she added, "I also have a spare key you can borrow."

The ice melts! "Thank you." Don stopped there, not willing to push his luck on that topic. "What can you tell me about the murder scene?" Equal to equal. Trying to offer non-verbal respect.

"Single shot to the heart, long range sniper from the hills behind the research facility. She was dead before she hit the floor." Nogales looked away. "She never knew what happened."

But Don caught it. "You liked her."

Nogales lifted her chin. "She was always fair to me. And she was good to the horses. You can tell a lot about people by the way they treat their animals."

Don nodded. "That sounds like not everyone around here does that. And that not everyone is happy with your Security Department."

Nogales snorted. "We do our job."

Which was why some people weren't happy with the Security Department. No help there. "I'd really like to know where Dr. Halligan went when she went riding," Don mused. "Would you know which animal she usually took?"

"How will that help?" Testing.

"I'm not about to tell you that I'm any expert, but maybe if I give the horse its head, it will lead me along her favorite paths." Don cocked his head. "You think?"

"Maybe."

Ha. Another icicle melted. Give him a hundred years and he might even win this woman over and get her full cooperation. Of course, if she was the sniper, she would be leading him down the garden path. Somehow Don didn't think she was. He'd been wrong before, and would undoubtedly be wrong again in the future, so he wouldn't leave her out of the possibilities, but…

Didn't have time for that right now. He needed more direct routes. "I'm also going to need access to Dr. Halligan's office," he requested. "I'll throw my experts in and see if they can come up with anything."

"They won't. I've already been through her effects."

"I believe it, but a fresh pair of eyes—"

"Whatever you want. Mr. Stewart said full cooperation."

Damn. Icicles re-froze.

***

"I can touch stuff, right?" Charlie was almost afraid to pick up any of the papers on the late Dr. Halligan's desk.

"Go right ahead, Charlie. This area's already been scanned by the locals," Rufus told him. "Don't have to worry about fingerprints or anything like that. Wouldn't have to anyway; this is not where she was killed, and any fingerprints here won't help us. They'll belong to the staff. This is not the crime scene itself."

"Oh. Good." Charlie moved forward, looking at the papers left on the researcher's desk. It contained notes, data that she would never follow up. Sad, he thought. How would he himself feel if he never had the opportunity to return to his work on Paget's Theorum, or the really cool variation that explained the wiggles in queing theory? Not enough time. "How old was she?"

"What?"

"How old was Dr. Halligan?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know. Forty something, I think. Why?"

"No particular reason. Just trying to get a mental picture of who she was," Charlie said. He gestured at the papers on the desk. "This tells me part of it. Pictures tell me other parts, what she looked like and such."

"How will that help?"

"I'm not sure that it will."

"Okay." Rufus nodded his head slowly. The doubt was clear. He picked up one of the papers. "This looks like some of the yield statistics on the process. Pretty good; they were getting a ninety three percent yield on the final product of Formula K-19."

"Ninety three percent? That is good. Astoundingly good." Charlie picked up his own selection of papers. "This looks like a partial from some computer files. Think they'd mind if I went hunting in the computer?"

Another strange look from Rufus. "Charlie, we're the FBI, and this is a homicide. We can go looking where ever we damn well please."

"Oh. Right." Charlie pecked tentatively at the keyboard. "I need her password."

"You want me to hack it?"

Charlie winced. "I was thinking more along the lines of asking the IT department to release it. Cooperation, and all of that."

Rufus grinned. "Spoilsport."

"I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunities to go chasing after criminals in cyberspace," Charlie told him. "I hear that Internet fraud is on the rise."

"True. But that's handled out of Langley. Local offices don't get to see much of it, although I wouldn't mind getting stationed in L.A. Nice place, lots of friendly girls. Hello," he finished up, surprised, as Charlie's fingers danced over the keyboard and something significant popped up. "That wasn't under protection."

"Actually, it was," Charlie disagreed.

"You hacked it? That was fast. I thought you were going to call IT."

"Didn't need to." Charlie pointed at a white board that had been fastened to one wall. There were neat black equations all over it, carefully partitioned off into geometric squares. "I knew that I liked Dr. Halligan. She was a woman who was very careful with her data."

"What do you mean?"

Charlie indicated a black square that had slash lines in a tidy border around the contents. It looked like an equation of some sort, numbers and letters, tacked onto the bottom of the white board. "She was concerned that she'd forget her password."

"That wasn't her password. Passwords don't contain plusses and minuses."

"Solve it." Charlie grinned.

"What?"

"Solve it," Charlie repeated. "Solve the equation."

"It's in three variables and only two equations. I can't solve it without some way to factor out the variables."

"Solve it in terms of x," Charlie clarified. "Once I did that, I tapped in the results of x equals 6y43z. Simple and elegant. Really nice way to create a password reminder. I knew that I liked her," he mused. "Hah. What do we have here?"

"Spread sheet of some kind."

"Yes, but what kind?" Charlie hit the print button.

"What are you doing?"

"I work better when I can see the numbers," Charlie explained. "Don't you?"

"Never thought about it," Rufus admitted. "Usually I plug in the formulas and pop out the answers."

"What if you don't have the formulas? What if the formulas don't fit?"

That set Rufus back. He covered by pulling the sheets from the printer as they emerged, scanning the data before handing them to Charlie. "We can cover more territory if we split up the work. You're already on the computer; you want to stay there?"

"Actually, if you don't mind, I'll let you handle that," Charlie said. "I've always liked the feel of paper in my hands, and I'd like to think that Dr. Halligan felt the same way. I'll go through her hard copy."

"Have it your way." Rufus was clearly relieved.

***

Don took David with him, getting directions to the townhouse that Dr. Alyse Halligan had called home until recently. It was in a nicer section of town, definitely upscale; as Barry Stewart had said, Caldwell paid its senior researchers well. A gardener looked up idly as they passed in Don's Suburban, raking the autumn leaves into a pile.

"Azaleas," David commented.

"Pardon?"

"Azaleas," David repeated. "She had four of them. She must have liked them."

"Or they were a convenient sort of bush to keep around," Don thought. "They flower in the spring, right?"

"Right." David inserted the key into the lock of the front door and turned. It opened without complaint, letting them into a marbled foyer. Three coats hung on the tree, the occupant too tired to hang them up and now too deceased to ever do it.

The place had a designer 'don't touch' look about it. Halligan seemed to have hired someone to decorate the place and then only lived in a small portion of it: the computer room. That room was a cluttered mess, papers scattered and books tossed onto the floor to be re-shelved at a more opportune time. A small picture of two older people and another of someone who looked similar enough to be a sister hung on the wall. Don found this room to be the more accurate portrayal of the victim. Halligan had a secret vice: computer solitaire. Somehow it made her seem more real.

There were still dirty dishes in the sink and a dishwasher that had been run and not yet unloaded. He and David went swiftly through the rest of the place, noting and discarding everything. The bills had been paid, with the exception of the few that had accumulated over the last few days, and the trash had been taken out the night before the researcher had been murdered. Clearly Alyse Halligan had not anticipated her imminent demise.

Something kept drawing Don back to the computer room. It wasn't the computer itself; David had run through that and had told him that if there was anything suspicious hidden there it would take one of their L.A. experts to drag it out. No, there was the feeling that there was something in plain sight, some clue that would let him know why she had been murdered.

Don shook himself. Dr. Halligan hadn't been the target. It had been Dr. Bostwick, one flight up. Bostwick had called Halligan to his office for a conference about Formula K-19, and they had stood by the window, gazing out over the fields that Caldwell owned. The crops were growing well, courtesy of K-19. There was a flash of light on the hillside, Bostwick said, the glass shattered and Halligan fell to the floor. The sniper had missed, had failed to account for Rufus Gordon's ballistics approach. Halligan had been in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and it had been sheer bad luck that the bullet had struck her chest instead of flattening itself against a wall. Bostwick had escaped with nothing more than a panic attack. And there was nothing here in Halligan's home that would lead them to the killer because Halligan wasn't the intended victim.

"Waste of time," he told David, wondering if he was making a mistake.

"Had to be done."

"Waste of time anyway. Let's get back, see what we can find out about our killer."

"I'll call L.A., see if they've come up with anything on the list of competitors."

"Do that. I'll check on Charlie and Rufus."

***

"Dr. William Bostwick," David read from the file that had been sent by the home office. "Fifty three years old, Ph.D. in biochemistry from MIT, four major patents and a host of smaller ones to his name, most registered with Caldwell International. Married, two adult children with a grandchild and a half."

"Half a grandchild?"

"Due in April," David clarified. "Well respected in the community, regular contributor to a host of charities. Fond of sponsoring starving artists that he thinks have promise. Wife is the society type, attending a bunch of functions with the same charity theme."

"Real pillar of society type," Colby opined. "Plays golf?"

"Plays golf. Every Sunday at the Eastchester Country Club. Pretty exclusive place. Hefty club dues."

"How'd I guess?" Colby complained, moving on. "Didn't I see something about the head of security in those files you got in, David?"

"You did, Colby. Rosa Nogales, born in Texas, moved here as a kid with her family. Her dad was in the military but was lucky enough to be stationed in one place while she and her seven brothers were growing up."

"Seven brothers? No wonder she's as tough as nails. Had to keep up with them."

"Yeah," David acknowledged. "That's not half of it. Went into the military herself, won base competitions in both martial arts and marksmanship. Honorable discharge, tried to get into law enforcement but couldn't pass the height requirement. Settled for a job with Caldwell and worked her way to the top of the security totem pole within a year." He shrugged doubtfully. "I talked with some of her staff. It may be sour grapes, but a couple of 'em implied that she slept her way up. Wouldn't say any more than that. Except that she likes nice things. Expensive things."

Don frowned. It didn't feel right. "So Nogales is a suspect. She could have been the sniper. She has the skills to do it, she's in the right place, and we have a possible motive: the competition who hired her for a boatload of money. David, do some digging there. See if you can find out anything about her finances, recent transfers of large sums, that sort of thing. What about this competition, the guys who don't want Caldwell International to succeed?"

"There are a few," David acknowledged, scanning the information. "Trouble is, we can't go after them without a little more to go on. We need to track down our killer first and establish a link."

"Getting anywhere with the tire tracks?" Rufus asked.

"Nope. Common type, used to see 'em with a blimp."

"Anyone new in town? Place this size, someone might notice."

"Too busy minding their own business," Colby said. "I talked to some of the Security guys; they checked out that angle. They were conducting their own investigation before Stewart called us in."

Don frowned. "How about the locals? This was a murder, after all. They should have notified the police."

"They did, but this town has a department that numbers all of sixteen, and the patrolmen double as detectives when detecting is needed. Good folks, but an investigation like this is beyond them."

"So why did Stewart tell his own people to back off?" Don asked.

They looked at each other. Colby shrugged.

"I think a little more discussion with Security Chief Nogales is in order," Don decided. "Did we get that file on Stewart himself yet? No? David, that's your baby. Run it down. Anybody got anything else? Charlie? Rufus?"

"Not much—" Rufus started to say but Charlie interrupted.

"Dr. Halligan left some data that needs crunching, some numbers on a couple of spreadsheets. It's not clear yet what it's demonstrating, but I'd like to take a crack at figuring it out."

"You think it's pertinent?" Don asked.

"I won't know until I figure it out. But it was under her password, and in a separate file." Charlie scrunched his eyebrows. "I don't know why I think so, but I think she's trying to tell us something."

"We've got the other stuff to go through," Rufus objected. "There's the K-19 process that they were working on, the one that made Dr. Bostwick a target."

"You work on that," Charlie directed, surprising Don with his directness. "It's mostly chemistry, anyway, not math. I wouldn't be of much use there…" He let his voice trail off, thinking.

"Charlie?"

"Steps," Charlie muttered, still deep in thought.

"Steps?" Rufus started to push forward, but Don put a restraining hand on his arm.

"Hold off," he advised. "Charlie?"

"There were a lot of steps to the process," Charlie mused, his attention clearly elsewhere. He blinked. "Something like fifteen? Find out, Don."

"Important?"

"It could be very important."

Don shrugged, looking at Rufus. "You heard the man. Find out."


	3. Chapter 3

"Just like that," Rufus grumbled, only half under his breath. "'Find out', the man says, and we all jump." He chanced a look at the other man in the room, David Sinclair, seeing how the older agent would take his comment. "He really that good, that Eppes just takes his word for it? It's not just a brother thing?"

"He's really that good," David assured him. "When Don first brought Charlie in I was as skeptical as you, maybe more. But those numbers of his have solved some pretty tough cases for us, and I'm not ashamed to admit I like having the help. But you're the guy with the degree in math. Don't you know this stuff? Man, with a degree in math you could have written your ticket to anywhere and have them thank you for the privilege. What made you choose law enforcement?"

"I don't know. The thrill of the chase, maybe." Rufus's face lit up. "I mean, I suppose you get some of that when you solve a really hard equation; you finally figure out which formula you're supposed to use. But when you go busting in through that door and your suspect starts yammering like a hummingbird on speed? Dude, that totally rocks!"

"Uh-oh," David grinned. "Adrenaline junky, on the loose. Watch out, L.A." Then he interrupted himself. "Oops, forgot. Area Director Thomas has plans for you. Minneapolis?"

"St. Louis," Rufus said. "Not real thrilled with the cold, but…" He trailed off. "You know, there is no 'but'."

"Not into skiing? Snowboarding?"

"I do my snowboarding with a surf board and a rip tide. Wouldn't mind being assigned to L.A. I grew up in Florida. This weather here is better; just as hot but with no humidity like back home. And, for variety, this is just a couple of hours' drive away." Rufus waved his hand to encompass the outdoors filled with trees and the occasional mountain. "This is good stuff out here. I like it. I could learn to like it a whole lot more. Think there's a chance I could get assigned here instead? Think you could put in a good word for me?"

"Do a good job and put in for a transfer," David advised. "That's what Don did."

"For real?"

"Yeah. He grew up here, worked in New Mexico for a while, then moved back home. FBI didn't want to lose him, so they hustled the transfer through. Good move for everyone." David left it at that, and moved back to the case. "You finding anything with that process stuff?"

Rufus groaned. "I swore when I passed Organic Chemistry that I'd never look at another chemical equation again. This stuff is harder than math. I can pronounce it, but I can't tell you anything more about it."

"What was it that Charlie wanted you to find out? How many steps in the process?"

"Oh, that's the easy part." Rufus pointed to the last page. "Sixteen different steps to arrive at the final product. You put the initial chemicals in, distill it sixteen times in sixteen different ways with sixteen different solutions, and you come out with the miracle formula that will revolutionize the world."

"Now I know why I majored in law enforcement," David groaned. "That sounds worse than Charlie at his best. Charlie at least makes things sound comprehensible."

***

The next conference was held in a private room. At Don's signal, the group did a quick once over to check for any listening devices.

Colby reacted. "Don?"

"Can't be too careful," was the reply. "Corporate espionage may not be up to international levels but that doesn't mean that they're incompetent. Okay, we need to coordinate. Where are we on everything? Colby?"

"Ran background checks on more of the key players," Colby reported. "Bostwick you've heard about, but I came up with an additional piece of information. Dr. Bostwick has a nice chunk of Caldwell stock in his portfolio. Caldwell goes down, his private fortune goes down with it."

"Of course, if he gets killed, the fortune won't mean much," Rufus put in.

"True," Colby agreed. "The same goes for our chief exec, Mr. Stewart. He too has a hefty sum invested in his own company, and listen to this: word on the street is that he has some debts. An expensive house, an expensive vacation home, not to mention the yacht. And he made some bad business deals. Word on the street is that he's hurting."

"Okay, Stewart too is living way beyond his means. How does that lead to trying to kill off his lead researcher?" Don asked reasonably. "Let's look at this rationally. Bostwick gets offed, this miracle K-19 formula goes down, and Caldwell's stock plunges. Exit one fortune. If anything, that would tend to exonerate Stewart as the prime mover behind an assassin. David?"

"Checked on the competition." David added in his contribution. "There are only a few corporations large enough to be of consideration, and none have a history of playing this dirty. Sure, there are some trade secrets that get shifted around under shady circumstances and at least two of them have made unsuccessful plays to hire Bostwick—and Halligan—away from Caldwell, but there hasn't been any talk of something of this magnitude. If anything, there's shock and dismay that Halligan was killed. Most seem to think that it was a shame, that Bostwick was the more deserving candidate for an assassin's bullet. Bostwick hasn't made himself very popular, but the bean-counters appreciate him. He makes lots of money for the company."

"Hm." That too required thought for the team. "Any suggestion that maybe this didn't have anything to do with Caldwell? That maybe Bostwick annoyed the wrong people?"

The team looked at each other.

"Yet another angle to pursue. We'll leave that one alone for the moment until we finish running down what's on our plate. Keep your ears open, people, and let me know if we need to give that concept a higher priority," Don murmured. "Rufus, you get anywhere on your end?"

"Not very far," Rufus admitted. "Chemistry is not my strong suit. As far as I can figure, this process works by encouraging the target crop to produce more: grow larger, faster, and taller. It's organic based, with a name that I might be able to pronounce if I worked at it for the next month or so. They wouldn't let me see the actual process, not that I could understand it—"

"How many steps to the process?" Charlie interrupted.

Rufus blinked. "Sixteen, near as I can figure."

"And the yield?"

"Yield?"

"Yes, the yield. How much matter did they start with, and how much did they end up with? How much was lost during processing?"

"Charlie?" Don raised his eyebrows. It sounded like his brother was onto something, but whether or not it was pertinent to the investigation would be another story. It wouldn't be the first time that Charlie had darted off onto a tangent.

"Bear with me, Don. Did you find out the final yield?"

Rufus consulted his notes. "Ninety three percent, according to Dr. Bostwick."

Charlie nodded, satisfied. Some internal statistic had just been proven. "That's highly unlikely."

"Give," Don demanded. "What do you know that we don't? Why is it unlikely, and how is it important to what we're doing here? Emphasis on the last phrase, brother."

Charlie settled into lecture mode. "I don't know chemistry, but I don't _need_ to know chemistry. Numbers tell the story. The process we're looking at is highly unlikely to produce a ninety three percent yield."

"And you know that because…?"

It was a good thing that someone had left an oversized tablet of paper on an easel for an eager underling to draw on. Charlie seized on it, scribbling numbers as fast as he could, in lieu of his usual white board.

"We have just learned that this process has sixteen steps, and that's one of the keys to determining the final yield. Let me start from the beginning: theoretically, if you were to put one gram of Chemical A in plus one gram of Chemical B you would have two grams of Product C. But chemistry doesn't work like that in real life. A certain amount is lost through the heat of the chemical reaction, through simple waste, through the inability to completely remove the Product from the container; any number of straightforward things. Result: instead of getting two grams of Product C, we have only 1.9 grams of Product C. At most, we get a 99 percent yield."

"Okay…" Don drawled. It was not okay. Charlie was still light years beyond him and everyone else in the room.

Professor Eppes hadn't spent years in front of seas of glazed eyes for nothing. He pushed ahead. "Now consider that we have sixteen steps to this process of Caldwell's. Let's assume that each time, each step, there is a yield of 99 percent. After step one, we have 99 percent of our starting material. After step two, with another optimum yield of 99 percent, we have a 98 percent yield for the total process. Ninety nine percent of ninety nine is approximately ninety eight," he translated for those who chose not to grab paper to do the calculation, jotting the figures on a spare corner of his tablet. "Step three: 99 percent of 98 is 97. Continue that down for sixteen steps, and you arrive at an approximate yield of 85 percent. Not ninety three, as Dr. Bostwick reports. In order to obtain a ninety three percent yield, he would need to have several steps with 100 recovery of all material, and that simply doesn't happen in the real world."

"So Bostwick isn't good at math," Colby said. "How does that help us?"

Rufus put his own math degree into practice. "It means that his process isn't nearly efficient as he would have everyone believe. And that the company won't make as much money as they're projecting, because they won't be able to churn out as much of their miracle chemical as they think they can."

Charlie beamed. "Right."

"Okay, Bostwick is padding the numbers to make himself look good. I repeat, how does that help us?" Colby asked. "Are you trying to say that Bostwick is somehow trying to arrange his own murder? That doesn't make sense."

"You're right; it doesn't." Don rubbed at his chin, thinking. "Let's take a step back. We're all assuming that Bostwick was the target."

"Right. Halligan got in the way."

"That was the initial assumption. What if we were wrong?"

"Don?"

"Let's do a little more digging on Dr. Alyse Halligan," Don decided. "Charlie, Rufus, you two keep looking at the process, see what you can come up with. Refine your calculations; see if you can find out what Bostwick's yield ought to be. Rufus, I want you talking to some of the techs, getting their perspective on things. They sometimes see more than anyone thinks they do. David, have L.A. do a full dossier on Halligan. Colby, talk a little more to the locals. I'd like a better take on what they have to offer."

"And you?"

Don allowed one corner of his mouth to quirk upward. "Me and a horse have a date."

***

Colby Granger was received with suspicion at the local police station. Not a new sensation; Colby had been many places where upper authority figures were not appreciated. Local police headquarters were only one of many. Gang headquarters were another. Some of the Afghani tribal tents had been the interesting ones: the head man would welcome soldiers with open arms and then try to stab them once they turned their backs. The others would offer their daughters, try to marry them off to rich Americans.

Colby had learned never to turn his back, both literally and figuratively.

Police Chief Mueller, a skinny beanpole of a man who had never been taught how to smile, regarded Colby with all the enthusiasm of a man facing a rattlesnake. "Why don't you ask that Nogales chick?"

Colby adjusted his position in the far from comfortable chair, going for Don Eppes-like aplomb. "Where I come from, Chief, we kind of wonder why people have their own security people and what those security people are told not to see. I just assumed that you ran your office the same way."

Mueller grunted; clearly his estimation of Agent Granger had gone up a notch. Unfortunately for his, Colby's own estimation had also moved, but in the opposite direction. Colby's instincts were born out by Mueller's next words.

"You got that right. The little bitch would barely let us in to investigate the murder, kept telling us that we couldn't have access to trade secrets. Said that my department would leak all their little secrets." Mueller snorted. "We haven't had a murder around here for forty years. Not till those idiots on the hill showed up and built a factory. Think they're too good for the rest of us. Keep wanting us to foot the bill for more roads and the like."

"I'd appreciate a look at your case files." Colby tried to ooze sincerity. "You were the first people on the scene that we can trust. Trained eyes, and all of that."

"Yeah, well, we can do that," Mueller grudgingly allowed. "I was about to go after a warrant to investigate the place."

Colby let the man have his little fib. The police weren't about to do any such thing. If Colby was any judge of things, this department was going to bluster a bit, blame Caldwell International for their lack of progress, and generally let the whole case slide into quiet obscurity.

That didn't mean that the locals wanted it that way. Colby caught the little gleam in Mueller's eye that suggested that he'd like to see all of the people up at Caldwell get pushed around by Uncle Sam in the persons of the FBI agents. Colby grinned to himself. Not the right way to go about business, this pitting of one group against another, but if it solved this case a little faster then Colby wasn't above using the tools that were given to him.

"I tell you what." Colby leaned forward, going for a _we're in this together_ posture. "Let's keep you in the loop. We haven't got much, but the top guy at Caldwell—"

"Stewart. That's his name."

"—Stewart." Colby nodded at the correction as if he appreciated the help, "that Stewart fellow actually called us in, has told us that he wants everyone up on the hill—" picking up Mueller's own phrase—"to give us full cooperation. He thinks he can steer us around for his own purposes. Haven't quite figured out what those purposes are, but between the two of us, I think we should be able to come up with a pretty good guess."

"Yeah," Mueller nodded. "I think we can. Let me see about getting you the case files. What have you got on your end?"

Colby was prepared. "Found the bullet casings," he offered, knowing that the information was circulating anyway. "Custom job. We sent the stuff back to the lab in L.A. Got some pretty fancy tech stuff back there, and some over-educated types who know how to use it. Might as well get the taxpayers' money out of it."

"Yeah. Better than anything we got on this end," Mueller agreed bitterly, as if a small town needed that sort of forensic support. A secretary type handed him the case files, and Mueller handed it over to Colby. "Here. Take a gander at that. Statements from the principles, from that Bostwick feller, from the security bitch, from the lab tech that walked in right after it happened and found her on the floor."

"What do they say happened?"

"Mostly from the lab tech, and he's a young kid that grew up not too far from here." Implying that that fact alone gave the witness additional credibility. "Said he heard a crash, then a thump, then a screech from Bostwick. Door was closed; he knocked, but neither Bostwick or Halligan answered. Halligan couldn't; she was dead by that time and Bostwick, he was cowering in the corner so that the next bullet didn't get him. The tech—just a kid, really—pushed his way in and hit the panic button. Kid was covered in blood when we found him, had tried to see if there was any pulse. Said the stuff was still oozing out of the hole in her chest when he found her."

"So we have a secure time line," Colby mused. "Your pathologist verify the time of death as consistent with his story?"

"Sure did. Warm body, the whole thing. The kid's clean, just shaken up. Started heavin' his lunch just talking about it. Besides, we got the window broken with glass shards on the inside. No doubt that it came from those hills."

Colby agreed. "That part's straightforward. We found the sniper's nest, and we've got that angle covered. I know this would be too easy, but any of your people noticed any strangers hanging around? We found a few tracks up there, probably belong to some guy around six foot or so, close to two hundred pounds. Not saying that's our man, but maybe somebody hanging around up there saw something." Like maybe a little bit of a thing named Nogales hefting a gun with an expensive scope, perhaps?

"Anyone totin' a bag big enough for a rifle?" Mueller added. "Nope. Not gonna get that lucky." He thought for a moment. "How about if I call up some of the other police chiefs in the other towns around here? See if they got any two hundred pounders just come in on the bus?"

Yes! "That'd be a help," Colby told him. "Listen, what do you think of their Security Chief up at Caldwell? She any good?"

A sneer. "She thinks she is. Me, I like my women in bed, not patrolling the street. Females gotta know their place. That Nogales bitch belongs back on her own side of the border along with the other illegals."

Colby swallowed hard. _Don't let your jaw hit the floor, Colby,_ he told himself. _Play along. Just think of all the women you know who could wipe the floor with this piece of chauvinistic trash._

"Times are tough," he finally managed to choke out, promising himself that he wouldn't laugh, or cry, or do anything else to jeopardize the fragile relationship he had just built with the local constabulary. They needed the locals' cooperation, and maybe some staffing back up. But Don would get a full report on how open-minded this department wasn't. Maybe a little state government oversight in the near future would be a good thing to clean this place up. Colby hoped so.


	4. Chapter 4

"Knock, knock," Don said.

Nogales looked up, almost breaking into a welcoming smile before she remembered that this was the federal agent that had been hauled in because her bosses didn't think she could do the job. "How can I help you, Special Agent Eppes?"

"Don," Don reminded her. "From what I can gather, you were one of the people closest to Dr. Halligan."

"Dr. Halligan didn't get close to anyone."

Don acknowledged the correction. "But she had a working relationship with you. Did you ever go riding with her?"

"Ah. You're planning to try to retrace her rides," Nogales said.

"That's right. You know which horse she favored? You've got a stable here, right?"

"Yes." Was it his imagination, or did she soften just slightly? "Alyse liked a certain gelding, usually took him out on Sundays. A big dapple named Sarge."

"You ever ride with her?"

"Occasionally. Not too often," Rosa Nogales said with a certain regret. "Alyse had a heavy work load. She liked to get away from it all on Sundays, get away from everyone, and riding Sarge was the way that she did it. She'd go out mid morning and get back mid afternoon. Never said where she went, but she always looked a little more peaceful when she got back." She looked Don over carefully. "You think there's a little more going on than a case of mistaken identity, Special Agent Eppes?"

Don shrugged, carefully noncommittal. "I suspect everything. It's an occupational hazard. But you know that. You're in the business."

"Nice of you to remember that, Special Agent Eppes."

So much for that attempt at building a working relationship. Don took one last stab at it. "Any suggestions on which way to go before I give the horse his head?"

Nogales thought for a moment. Don was afraid that she was going to cut him off at the knees again, but she merely said, "try north, maybe a little bit east. Up the slopes. There's a nice view of facility; you can see not only the buildings but the small ranch that Caldwell maintains to try out their products on."

"They keep cattle?"

"About forty head or so, and some chickens off in a coop beside the barn. Head out to the stable, and listen. I'm sure you'll be able to hear them cluck."

"Thanks. I will." Don decided to escape while he could. Was there an insult in that last comment somewhere? Don chose to pretend that there wasn't.

***

"Ah, Dr. Eppes. I was looking for you." Dr. Bostwick entered the room along with a silent bodyguard type who carefully scanned the room to make certain that there was no assassin lurking among the nonexistent dust bunnies in the corners of the room. The bodyguard took up residence by the door, silent and burly.

Dr. Bostwick himself was large, enough to be described as over large in both physique and personality. Heavy-boned and tall, he had clearly enjoyed much of what life had to offer as demonstrated by his ample girth. The only thing in scant supply about Dr. Bostwick was his hair—and his humility. Charlie had run up against several of these types in academia, men who were so convinced of their general intellectual superiority that they truly believed that others needed to cater to their whims. Charlie had also developed his own technique for skewering those over-inflated balloons: patience. Simply wait until the inevitable gaffe occurred, and a verbal barb wouldn't even be needed. Bald-faced embarrassment would send the pompous ego into retreat.

Rufus, however, also seated at the conference table beside Charlie, was awed by the presence. No small man himself, there was a slight unconscious hunch to Rufus's shoulders that passed as an attempt to hide himself from intellectual scrutiny. Charlie recognized that maneuver as well, having seen it time and time again in students who came unprepared to his classes.

"Dr. Bostwick," Charlie greeted the researcher.

"Bill, please."

"Bill." Charlie stuck out his hand. "Charlie. This is Rufus."

The handshake that Bostwick gave Rufus was consistent with Rufus's desire to remain unnoticed. It was not Rufus that Bostwick was there to have conversation with. Bostwick only spoke to those who were his intellectual and/or social equals. Rufus didn't qualify.

"How are you coming with the investigation, Charlie?" he asked. "Find out anything?"

"Making progress," Charlie acknowledged. "I'm just the consultant. My brother Don is the one who does the investigating, him and his team."

"Interesting. How does a mathematician consult on a murder case?"

"Lots of ways," Charlie told him. "Bullet angles are only one aspect of practical math applications. I look for patterns in all sorts of things."

"Really? What sort of pattern would you find in my process? I hear your assistant has been looking at my work."

"Rufus isn't my assistant, he's an FBI agent," Charlie corrected with an apologetic look at Rufus.

"But my question stands," Bostwick pressed. "What sort of pattern did you find in my process?"

"Nothing, yet," Charlie returned. Rufus still hadn't found his voice. "I'm sure that there are patterns in there somewhere, but nothing that seems pertinent at the moment. I'm just sort of poking around, seeing what pops up and catches our attention. Remember, I'm supposed to be looking for stuff that applies to Dr. Halligan's murder, not things that simply apply to agricultural chemistry." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "Tell me about your process. Not the chemistry of it; I doubt that I'd be able to understand it in a single sitting. But the whole concept sounds quite amazing. How do you test it?"

"Ah." Bostwick's face lit up; he was on familiar ground there. He settled in for a long lecture. "As you came in, did you see the fields around us?"

"Yes. I assumed that they belonged to some of the local ranches. Not so?"

"Quite right. Those fields belong to Caldwell; we grow wheat and other grains on them to test my Formula K-19. We're in the process of harvesting a lot of it right now and feeding it to the herd of cattle that we maintain for the same purposes. The chickens are also feasting on the corn crop, whatever we didn't lose to the local crows and their brethren."

"So your process is designed for use on livestock? Not for food intended for human consumption?"

"We'll get there," Bostwick said confidently. "Right now we're only looking at cattle feed, and the crops that we're feeding to poultry. Frankly, we feel we'll have better acceptance by consumers going that route. If it's fed to livestock, it's a step away from human consumption. None of the silly naturalists to interfere and say that chemicals are ruining us."

"Ah ha." Charlie leaned back. "That explains the cattle I spotted on the way here. They're all yours? Caldwell's, I mean?"

"That's right. A year or so ago we purchased some cattle from the locals and hired some workers to manage the ranch. We keep a stable of horses, as well; do you ride?"

"I ride a bike," Charlie said with a straight face.

Bostwick laughed good-naturedly. "We'll have to see about getting you on a horse. You, too—I'm sorry, I don't remember your name?"

"Rufus." Who was not unhappy at being overlooked by the two geniuses. Safer to stay in the background and keep his mouth shut. "I'd like that. Haven't ridden since I was a kid."

Another chuckle. "We'll remedy that. Anything else, Dr. Eppes? Full cooperation, you know. And, since it seems to be my hide that is getting shot at, I'm very eager to cooperate."

"Charlie," Charlie reminded the older man. "Actually, yes, there is one other thing. I've been looking over some of your results, and I have to say, I'm very impressed. A ninety three percent yield?"

"Pretty amazing, isn't it?" Bostwick preened. "I dare any other researcher in this particular field of study to match that. And you're wondering how, right?"

"You've got me there." Charlie nodded.

"Somehow, if I say 'magic', I don't think you'll believe me," Bostwick teased. "The secret is in the purity of our starting material. The more pure the original matter, the more likely we are to come up with a strong yield. Of course, it helps that we're still in the micro-production phase. I keep strong control over the entire process, from beginning to end. I suspect that the yield will drop off somewhat once we rev up the quantities but it should still be good enough to make a substantial difference in the final outcome." He paused. "That answer your question, Dr. Eppes? I'm sorry—Charlie."

"It does," Charlie told him. "You wouldn't happen to have any of the raw data lying around? Professional curiosity, you understand. How your field of research crunches its numbers, and such."

"I think I can arrange that…" Bostwick allowed his voice to trail off. "In fact…" He stood, crossing to the terminal sitting at an empty desk in the corner of the room. He turned it on. "Give me a couple of moments to access the data on the mainframe. I should be able to print it out at the main desk in a couple of moments. That do the trick?"

"More than acceptable," Charlie grinned.

***

Don inhaled, and smiled. Even the smell of manure couldn't dampen his spirits. It had been too long since he'd been riding and even though this clearly fell under the line of duty, he was looking forward to getting into the saddle again. Stewart had called ahead, had alerted the stable hands that Special Agent Eppes was to have access to whatever he needed, and the results were a girl barely out of her teens leading a dappled gray toward him.

"That Sarge?" Don only had eyes for the horse.

"You ride?" The girl's primary concern was for the horse and its immediate future. "I could take you out, show you around."

"This is not a joy ride," Don told her, "and, yes, I've been on a horse. This the animal that Dr. Halligan used to ride?"

"Yeah," she said, not convinced of Don's competence. "I've been exercising him during the week. Dr. Alyse used to come out and feed him a carrot or something on her lunch break." She rubbed the horse's nose with obvious affection. Don couldn't be certain whether that affection aimed at the horse, at Dr. Halligan, or both.

"You've seen her a lot, then." It was not really a question.

"Yeah. She really cared about Sarge."

"She seem upset about anything the last few days?" Don couldn't help it; the question popped out.

The girl looked startled, then looked around uneasily. "Maybe."

Don took that as a yes. "Did she say why?"

"When we talked, we talked about horses," the girl admitted. "Dr. Alyse usually didn't want to talk about work, and the stuff she did talk about was way beyond me. Horses were better to talk about."

"Oh." Don hadn't really expected to get anything, but it was disappointing just the same.

"But she did use to talk to Sarge here."

Ears perked up. "That sounds like she said some interesting stuff."

"I don't know if you'd call it interesting…"

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" Don suggested. "What did she say?"

"Just stuff about wanting to look at the ranch from high up." The girl pointed up toward the slope gently climbing away from the buildings. "She wanted to look at the cattle from a distance. She'd usually start out along that trail." The girl pointed.

"Thanks. That's a good start for me. I'd like to see what she saw, go where she went." Don cocked his head. "That's all that she said? Nothing more? Even stuff that didn't sound like it meant anything?"

"Nothing more, unless you want to hear about the 'you know you don't get more than one carrot, Sarge' stuff."

Don grinned. "I'll pass on the 'I love you, little horsie' kind of sayings. But thanks. You've helped."

"For real?"

"For real. I think that Dr. Halligan would have approved."

"Good." The girl rubbed at a nonexistent itch on the dappled gray she was leading before handing the lead over to Don. "You're gonna get the guy who did this, right? I mean, to Dr. Alyse?"

Don stepped into the stirrup and swung onto the saddle, testing the fit. Sarge snorted gently, flicked his ears back and forth at the smell of an unknown rider. "I'm sure going to try."

***

"What's going on here?" Rosa Nogales, head of Security, strode up to the stables, fire flashing. Charlie got the distinct impression that a few choice words had been edited from her original question, words that weren't found in any reputable dictionary. "What do you think you're doing?" She planted her feet firmly in the center of the courtyard, daring anyone to move her aside and that included the half ton horses that were being led out by the stable hands.

David Sinclair was unimpressed. Federal authority trumped private property, especially when the CEO of said private property had called in the federal assistance. A murder had taken place, and tracking down the murderer was a higher priority than corporate secrets. "We're investigating, Ms. Nogales."

"And you think one of the stable hands did it? Maybe one of the horses? Pretty tough to hold a sniper's special with hooves," Nogales lashed out.

Charlie interrupted, trying to head off the fireworks. "Actually, Dr. Bostwick suggested that we come out this way. His formula may have some bearing on the problem, and we'd like to examine the results on the fields. I understand that it's easiest to get to those fields on horseback. Care to join us? Dr. Bostwick is."

"He is?" That put a new spin on things. Unreadable thoughts darted behind those liquid brown eyes. "Thank you for the suggestion, Dr. Eppes. I will join you." And added, "I'm not entirely comfortable with Dr. Bostwick being out in the open. If a sniper tried once, he may try again. A single security person may not be enough."

"Glad to have you join us." David declined to point out that Bostwick wouldn't have simply his bodyguard, but would have three FBI agents along as well. If Nogales needed that sop to her ego, he'd let her. The FBI could afford to be magnanimous. They held all the trump cards.

"You ride?" Charlie asked. At her affirmative, he grinned engagingly at her. "Good. You can look after me as well as Bill Bostwick. Me, I have to ask which horse's ear you stick the key into. How much horsepower is there under the skin? Is the black one the sports model? Which one has an automatic transmission? I have serious issues with a stick shift. Oh, sorry, you call it a crop."

Crude, but it worked. Rosa Nogales couldn't help but crack a grin. "Gawd," she burst out, choking down laughter, "do they seriously let you out in public?"

More grinning. "Not if they can help it," Charlie returned. "You should see what I've put Don through. The family joke is that he escaped to college to get away from me." Not all that far from the truth, he thought, but not for the reasons that the chief of security would think. "And my father is convinced that I need a keeper." He shrugged, still with a pleased expression. "I leave it to you to decide if he's right." He peered at the horse that the stable hand was patiently holding, the girl trying to keep from giggling. "That thing looks big."

Dr. Bostwick bustled up, bodyguard in tow. Was it his imagination, or did David see a ghost of dismay cross the senior researcher's face upon spotting Nogales? No matter. Bostwick took over.

"Everyone ready? Yes? Bess, where's Champion? Don't you have him saddled yet? What's keeping you? I hear him snorting all the way from here. Go get him." Bostwick strode across the paddock, pushing one of the horses out of his path, his bodyguard hustling to keep up. "And get a mount for Sikorski, here. He's coming with us. You too, Nogales? I thought you had other things you needed to do." _Better things to do,_ was the unspoken emphasis.

"Why, Dr. Bostwick," Nogales chirped, barely able to hold her malice in check, "I wouldn't dream of allowing you into the open fields without adequate protection. I shouldn't have to remind you that the sniper is still at large."

A fencing match, Colby Granger decided. Both parties jabbing at each other, testing each other's defenses, ready to strike a killing verbal blow.

Should make for an interesting ride.


	5. Chapter 5

The horses climbed the gentle slope, huffing and blowing, leaning into the angle with muscles rippling under warm horsehide. It had been too long since he'd ridden, Colby decided, enjoying the feel of the power of the animal beneath him. It was a good gelding, well-trained, obedient to the gentle guidance that he gave with the reins and the touch of his heels. Whatever Caldwell's faults, they cared for their animals. The stable was well run.

Nogales too rode a dappled black mare that had much more on the ball than nose-to-tail laziness. She was more at home in the saddle than any of them, guiding her mount with her knees, looking almost like one single being instead of horse and rider. Colby hid a smile; it would have been enjoyable to watch the woman gallop her horse across the field, long black hair flying on both woman and horse. But Nogales knew her job; she stuck close to the man that she clearly despised, scanning the surrounding environment for the glint of a weapon, for any sign that someone unexpected was watching and waiting for an opportune moment to wreak havoc. Bostwick would be hard to protect out in the open like this, but Nogales was determined to do her best.

The group gathered at a plateau, gazing down over the fields. The group was not small: three FBI agents, an FBI consultant, and the three Caldwell employees, including the two Caldwell security people. Bostwick urged his horse up closer to Charlie's, nosing Rufus's mount out of the way. Charlie pretended not to notice the slight to Rufus. It was in character for the older scientist. Objecting wouldn't have accomplished anything, and, frankly, Rufus seemed just as happy to be snubbed.

"Beautiful," Charlie commented. "You don't see this in L.A."

"No, you don't," Bostwick agreed, unusually reflective. The fields rolled away from a sharp drop from the plateau, leveling off and extending almost to the horizon. They were fashioned in simple squares, the crops that had benefited from Bostwick's process gleaming green and turning golden under the onslaught of autumn. One field had already been mowed, the bales of hay tossed into another section that had been fenced off for the cattle. Charlie automatically counted; there were some forty head in the one field, all contentedly chewing away at the bales of hay. One snorted, and tossed its head, ruffling its neighbor who jostled yet another cow until it stomped away to another bale.

Rufus noted the puzzled look on Charlie's face. "Charlie?"

Dr. Eppes always assumed, perhaps erroneously, that others were keeping up with him. "Queueing theory," he murmured with a frown.

"Doctor?" Bostwick came on point, interested and, curiously, nervous. Rufus noted the researcher's posture. He couldn't explain it. It puzzled him. He stayed back, observing the pair of Ph.D.'s.

"A moment." Charlie held up his finger, counting the cattle.

***

It would have been better if he didn't have to be constantly scanning the surrounding area for clues. Leather squeaked as he swayed back and forth in the saddle, adjusting to the horse's gait, knowing that there would be a few stiff and sore spots before the day was over but enjoying it just the same. Don gave Sarge his head, allowing the big gelding to amble its way through the forest, plodding along an almost non-existent trail, hoping that this was the route that the late Dr. Halligan had favored. Would it tell Special Agent Eppes anything? He hoped so. It would be a shame to waste the fresh air on a mere joy ride.

The Caldwell holdings were a great deal larger than the buildings alone. The horse had already taken Don through a couple of the fields, the animal stretching its neck out to snap at a stray sheaf. Don pulled the reins back in, reminding the horse that it too was on duty. Eating extra oats was not part of that duty. Don had already made friends using an apple that swiftly vanished down the horse's gullet, and saw no reason to allow the horse's training to slip during the ride itself. The stable hands had demonstrated their devotion and caring, and Don refused to interfere. He was, after all, here on business. Even if that business was hard to stick to while inhaling the fresh mountain air filtered by autumn leaves cascading onto the trail around him. He pushed back a slender branch, preventing it from brushing across his face.

The horse turned automatically onto a trail leading further up the slope, and Don's spirits lifted. This was a path that the horse had traveled often. Don eyed the sides of the trail, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that might lead to an answer to this case.

There was a multitude of things that bothered him about this case. First, the mere fact of the identity of the corpse. There was no reason to kill Dr. Halligan that they could find. The woman had no debts, no family feuds, no jilted lovers, nothing but a job that she loved and where she spent most of her waking hours. Clearly the target had been Dr. Bostwick, in whose office the pair had been when Halligan was assassinated. Bostwick was the head researcher, the man responsible for the Caldwell formula, the man who would bring in millions to the Caldwell stockholders and drain those millions from other agricultural companies. There was a man who asked to be killed, Don reflected. Successful, and obnoxious about it. Agri-corporations would want a crack at him. Co-workers disliked him. Rosa Nogales, head of Security, could barely contain her distaste. Maybe he should look at Bostwick's wife? He'd put David on it when he returned. Sinclair had a gift for working with witnesses, had a calm and probing manner that turned people into putty. If there was something wrong in the Bostwick household, he could rely on David to ferret it out.

The horse paused at a small clearing high up on the slope, unsure if Don wanted it to continue on the path. Don peered off into the distance. Caldwell International was laid out below him, the entire holdings for him to see. There were fields of wheat or whatever crop was on Bostwick's list of trial plants, and several fields with cattle gently moving about. Don put binoculars up to his eyes to scan more closely. There were bales of hay dotting the fields, with cattle at one end munching and chewing their cud. The cattle bunched together; herd instinct, Don thought idly. Even as he watched, a flock of crows lifted from one of the other fields of wheat/corn/grain; Don couldn't identify which crop and supposed that for the moment it didn't matter. He doubted that wheat was the cause of Dr. Halligan's demise. Oats were not noted for their propensity to hire hit men.

Don looked around at the clearing that the horse had paused in; a lovely spot for a picnic, or sight-seeing, or, if there was another person, a romantic getaway. A bit chilly at present with winter pressing its suit in the higher elevations, but during the summer months Don could see a couple stealing away to this spot to indulge. Secluded, quiet—hm, perhaps the middle-aged Dr. Halligan wasn't as chaste as her co-workers believed? Wouldn't be the first tryst that ended up with bloodshed, and that would be a good explanation for why the killer missed Bostwick. He wasn't after Bostwick, he was after Halligan.

But that didn't fit the evidence. Bostwick had been the intended target; the sniper missed. The angle of the shot showed that, and the placement of the discarded casings that Rufus and David had found.

Don sighed. Nothing made sense. He turned the horse's head back to the path, allowing it to pick its way further up hill.

The path lulled him into a sense of peace, and he had to work at staying alert. There was nothing on the trail to suggest any clues, simply the rounded indentations of iron-shod hooves plodding upward toward the tree line. A broken branch here, a trampled bush there verified his idea that this was indeed Dr. Halligan's route, and so far everything was entirely innocent.

His thoughts turned to Rufus. The man had kept up his end of the case, sticking with Charlie and exploring the details of the process that seemed to be at the heart of the matter. He'd done his share, explaining some of the math and chemistry concepts to Don himself. Not that Charlie couldn't have done the same thing, but Don needed to hear it from Rufus. A.D. Thomas had asked for an evaluation of the man, and being able to succinctly explain things not immediately understandable to the mere mortals was part of that evaluation. So far, so good. Don would be giving a good report on the agent. Sure, Rufus didn't have Charlie's sheer genius, but that wasn't what Thomas had said that he wanted. Thomas wanted an agent who could put together the math concepts with the attributes of a good agent in the field. Looked like Rufus was going to go far, if he could stand the cold. Colby had clued Don in that Rufus wouldn't mind an invitation to remain in sunny L.A. _Sorry, Rufus. Already got a math guy. Keep you in mind if a vacancy pops up, though._

The path crossed a dirt road. The horse ambled across it, preparing to move onto the continuing trail on the other side, but Don suddenly reined back. He looked closer, trying to figure out what had just set his 'spidey-sense' tingling.

There they were: tire tracks. Fresh tire tracks. Fresh tire tracks superimposed upon tire tracks that were only a day or two old.

Don listened: nothing. No engine noises, no rumbling of a vehicle climbing the dirt slope. He frowned. What was someone doing up here? There wasn't anything around, no buildings, no people. This wasn't public land where anyone was welcome to go hiking.

But this was relatively close to where his team had found the spent casings. He peered closely, suddenly convinced that these were the tracks that his people had identified as highly likely to belong to the sniper, the same tracks that Colby had made a cast of and sent off to the lab in L.A. Yes, there it was, a small trickle of spilled casting material. These were the tracks.

With fresh tracks super-imposed. Which meant that the sniper had returned to the scene of the crime: why? What, if anything, had he left behind? In which case Don wanted to find it first, and soon!

More to the point, was the sniper still here? Don listened carefully: nothing. That didn't mean much, only that the sniper was either not here, or was being so quiet that Don couldn't hear him. Don got a little itch between his shoulder blades, wondering if the assassin had Don in his sights right now. _Wish I'd worn my vest._

Time to move. Don carefully and quietly swung down from Sarge's saddle, looping the reins over a tall bush to keep the horse from wandering. He paused to listen once more: nothing. Could he have remained undetected? Don decided to move forward on that supposition. He silently pulled his revolver from the shoulder holster, fingering the safety.

His time on Fugitive Recovery sidled back to him with a vengeance, memories of slipping up on a fugitive and taking him down without a shot. Don had been good at it, racking up a record of successes that had been the envy of his colleagues. Those techniques came back now, setting his feet down without so much as a whisper despite the heavy riding boots, and then sliding past the heavy bush that hid everything five feet ahead of him.

Maybe there was no one. Maybe the tracks had come and gone, and no one was there. Maybe the sniper had come back to retrieve the casings, found them missing, and fled.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Don wasn't willing to give up yet. Easing his way to the edge of the slope, he pulled out his binoculars once again. By scanning the surrounding foliage, he could hopefully detect some signs of human occupancy; something glinting, perhaps, or a tamped down area. The sniper could have moved to a spot further away, a place where he would have a clean shot into the research building of Caldwell International.

Far away, but not far enough. A good sniper with a powerful enough rifle could manage it. Don swung up the binoculars and stared at the research building. Yes, it was do-able. Don could see windows clearly through the lenses, would be able to focus a rifle well enough to put a bullet into a soft body. He could even make out a desk in one room, a chemistry bench in another. It would take a damn good sniper, but it was far from impossible. And it _had_ occurred. It had happened.

He could see the rest of his team below, possibly half a mile down slope and over toward the north. Don could make out his brother—even from this distance Charlie looked uncomfortable on top of a horse. With all the 'special tutoring' Charlie had received as a kid, there hadn't been as much time for him to simply be 'a kid.' No pony rides, no trips to the zoo. Not that Charlie had ever missed it. _It's hard to miss what you don't know about._ And Charlie had loved his numbers to the exclusion of almost everything else…

Rosa Nogales was there, looking like some strange sort of centaur, almost part of the horse itself. It was clear that the woman had grown up riding in this part of the country. Was that Bostwick with them? Damn, what was the man doing out in the open? Idiot Security people; Don's opinion of Nogales plummeted, then regained some of its height as he recalled how overpowering the scientist could be. That must be his bodyguard beside him—no, that was Rufus, big shoulders and all. The three of them—Charlie, Rufus, and Dr. Bostwick—were clearly discussing the scene below, perhaps the interaction of the Caldwell formula, the wheat field, and the cattle. It would make sense, and would be a valid reason for his team and the Caldwell personnel to be out in the fresh air. The unknown man off to their left must be the security man that Nogales had assigned. Don sighed. The security man wouldn't have lasted two days at Quantico, stationed that far away from his charge. Don wondered idly if the bullet proof vest that routinely sat in his Suburban would fit Dr. Bostwick. Nogales had the responsibility for the scientist's protection, but that didn't mean that Don didn't feel some portion himself. Having the man expire while the FBI was on the premises would appear something less than stellar.

Focusing the binoculars let Don clearly identify the other members of the FBI team who were present, David and Colby. After all this riding, there would be a concerted rush for the showers at the Caldwell guest apartments to rid themselves of the smell of horseflesh. Was Colby really sitting his horse that well? Don resolved to look over the man's jacket again. He hadn't known that Colby was comfortable on horseback. It was either that, or the horse knew how to make its rider look really good…

Charlie was pointing toward one of the fields, one with a herd of cattle scattered over one edge of it, chowing down on some of the bales of hay that had been tossed for their use. The cattle were bunched up at one end of the field, herd instinct in full force as though wolves or some such were about to attack from the other direction. Even up here on the slopes Don could faintly hear the lowing. Bostwick shook his head, Rufus echoing the same motion. _Ease up on the lectures, Charlie,_ Don thought.

Then he caught it, saw it in the corner of his eye. Light flashed, and glinted on something metal. That _something_ wasn't a mirror. He swung around, seeking to zero in with the binoculars, scanning as fast as he could.

He found it: a slender flicker of light among the dark scrub brush. It was a gun barrel. It was the scope of a high powered sniper rifle, with a dark figure carefully propping it against a convenient boulder for stabilization. The barrel wasn't aimed toward the research building, but rather something—or someone—much closer.

The next few moments played themselves out in slow motion. Intellectually he knew that time hadn't altered, that the seconds hadn't suddenly transmuted themselves into minutes, but as it occurred, every horrible instant etched itself into his consciousness and sat there, burning with acid ferocity.

The sniper's rifle cracked. The small jolt of the barrel bore witness to the velocity of the bullet winging its way to the grouping below.

There wasn't time to refocus the binoculars. Plain sight did just as fine a job letting him know that the high powered projectile had found its mark. One of the bodies on top of a horse jerked suddenly with the impact, and slumped. The horse, startled, bolted, taking the others with it.

 _Damn!_ Don used anger to counteract the fear that clutched at him. Who had gone down? It was one of the grouping of three, either Charlie, Bostwick, or Rufus. They had been nestled together, surveying the field below. A quick look showed Nogales plunging after the fleeing horses, two of the equines wildly galloping downhill but only one with a rider precariously perched on top. Another of his team—Don couldn't make out who—was following.

He couldn't help them, not from here. It was too far away. What he could do was take down the shooter, prevent him from shooting any more of the people below. Don threw caution to the wind, dropping the binoculars and dashing forward, handgun solid in his fist.

The sniper heard him coming. He hastily abandoned his long range weapon, running flat out toward the road. Don angled to cut the man off, but the sniper had too great a start and too many trees in the way. Seconds later Don heard a powerful engine rev into life. He had only seconds to catch sight of an SUV roaring past, California plates Delta niner niner—damn, missed the rest. Missed the small decal on the back bumper, too; something white and red that would have helped identify the vehicle.

No help for it. No time for it. Someone had gone down, and Don found himself praying that it had been Bostwick. Because if it weren't, both Charlie and Rufus were right next to the scientist. Right in the line of fire.

***

"I'm the first to admit I know little about cattle," Charlie said, "but why are they eating from some bales and not others? They seem to be ignoring some and going straight to others farther away." He pointed at a small cluster of dusty brown bovines.

Bostwick shrugged. "Cattle are not the brightest of animals. Herd instinct, too. They group themselves. They'll get those bales too, when they get there."

"You don't think there's something different about—"

 _Crack!_

Rufus had only been in one fire fight in his admittedly short career, but he'd spent plenty of time on the practice range and he knew that sound intimately. The sharp retort carried across the slopes far more slowly than the bullet itself. The man beside him, Dr. Bostwick, had already been shot at once, and a woman had died because of it. Rufus reacted.

He leaped from his mount, barreling into Bostwick and wrenching him down to the meager safety of the ground, rolling them both behind the more solid cover of a boulder. Bostwick yelped with surprise and shock. The Caldwell bodyguard joined them a moment later, handgun out and ready, peering over the boulder, looking for something to shoot at. Over his shoulder, Rufus saw David too jump down and pull out his own gun, searching for the sniper that had just struck.

It was not Bostwick who had been hit. The sniper had missed his target yet again, but another innocent had gotten in the way. Charlie slumped forward in the saddle. The horse, frightened, bolted.

Charlie stayed with the animal only a few hundred yards before falling to the rocky ground. Both Colby and Rosa Nogales chased after him and the three horses, the latter two horses having taken off in shared terror once their riders had been yanked away by Rufus. Colby pulled his horse up short, jumping free of the saddle to pull a limp Charlie behind a small cluster of rocks, scanning for any sign that the sniper might try again. "Charlie? Charlie, you okay?" _Man, this is like being in Afghanistan all over again!_

"I don't think so." This isn't supposed to happen to mild mannered mathematicians, Charlie thought, just as blackness rolled in and smothered him.


	6. Chapter 6

Don rode Sarge much too fast for the trail, but the big gelding was up to the challenge. Branches whipped by, slashing at his face; Don didn't care. All that mattered was getting to his team. The sniper was gone, fled in a gasoline-powered dust cloud.

Someone had gone down. How the hell could this happen? Why was Bostwick out here? Why had Nogales let him? The questions came fast and furious; a reaction, Don knew, to his anger. To his fear.

Guns snapped up and aimed at his arrival, and Don hastily pulled his horse up. "What happened?"

"Don!" David wasn't ready to re-holster his gun. "The sniper—"

"Gone." Don kept it short. "Who?"

Bostwick climbed to his feet. "He's still out there! He's trying to kill me! You have to find him!" The researcher looked around frantically. "It's not safe out here! We have to get back!"

"Don?" It was Colby, yelling. _Scared._ "Over here, Don."

Not Bostwick. Not Rufus. Don was convinced that his heart took time out for a moment of silence, terrified at what he would see. Later, he would never remember actually crossing the distance to where Colby was covering his brother.

"Charlie?" There was blood. There was a lot of blood. And there was his brother, on the ground, with his eyes closed.

Colby understood. "Not as bad as it looks, Don. It went through his arm, entrance and exit wounds. But he hit his head on the way down."

And head wounds bled like rivers. And sometimes into the skull, where they did lots of damage. Damage that a genius mind like Charlie's shouldn't suffer. _Wonderful. Not only have you allowed your brother to get hurt, you've taken a certified genius from the world. Way to go, Eppes._ He took Charlie's hand, unable to resist checking for a pulse. There it was, weak but steady. "Charlie?"

"Don?"

 _Yes!_ "You're gonna be okay, Charlie. Just lie still. Don't move."

"Don?" His brother blinked, blinked again, wasn't understanding what was going on. He struggled to sit up.

"Lie still," Don urged. "Charlie, you've been hurt. Lie still." He pulled off his jacket, pillowing it under Charlie's head, appalled when his fingers came away with blood. He steeled himself, pulling the emergency medical techniques out from dusty brain cells and checking for that telltale sinking feeling of shattered skull bone. There was none; not that his brother couldn't have a skull fracture, but at least it wasn't obvious. "We'll get you out of here."

"Don…" Charlie was losing the battle to stay awake.

Nogales rode up, reined in her horse, the leads from the other two horses in her hand. "I've called in for a helicopter to fly him to the trauma center, ETA in five. We'll have to get him down to the field. There's no place for the chopper to land here. Can you get him up onto a horse? He doesn't look like he can walk very far."

Don looked around; Sarge was the biggest horse, the best able to bear the weight of two men. "Help me get Charlie up onto Sarge. I'll take him." _Control; have to stay in control. I'm still the senior agent here._ "Colby, you and Rufus check out the sniper's nest. David, you're with me. I have a partial on the sniper's plates; that's yours as soon as you get back to a computer. Nogales, get Bostwick back to the facility. Make it fast. I don't know where the sniper went to." _Think you can keep him safe?_ he wanted to snarl. _Your man shouldn't have been out here in the first place. The sniper wouldn't have shot and missed—again!_

He mounted Sarge, keeping the big gelding still with the mere pressure of his knees, reaching down to help haul his brother up onto the saddle. Rufus was the biggest help, his height useful in arranging Charlie onto the saddle in front of Don where Don could keep holding onto his brother. Charlie tried, but was worse than useless; arms and legs refused to obey. He gave up with a groan, falling limply against the older man, and Don tightened his grip. _Blood leaking onto my shirt…_

Don nodded to Nogales. She had Bostwick back in the saddle, the bodyguard mounted on the other side of the researcher. "Move out," Don commanded, wanting to ask _why haven't you left yet? Trying to give the sniper another crack at him?_ "David, stick close. Colby, be careful. The sniper might circle back for another crack at Bostwick." _Hint, hint._

"Let's go!" the scientist said, alarmed at the thought. "Rosa, we should head back right now!"

"Head down to that field, Eppes," Nogales directed, pointing. "That's where I told the chopper to land. It's flat enough, and large enough, and far enough away from the cattle not to spook them. You," she said, pointing to David, "bring the horses back."

"Right." David wasn't pleased; he wasn't all that experienced with horses. But Colby chimed in, "we'll meet you down where the chopper lands, David. Rufus and I will head back with you as soon as we check out the sniper's nest."

"Got it." That was better.

Charlie sagged against Don's chest, wavering in and out of consciousness, the warmth reassuring to Don that his brother was still alive. Don adjusted his hold, clutching him just that much closer, needing the tactile comfort.

"Don?"

"I've got you, buddy."

"Queueing theory," Charlie murmured.

"What's that, buddy?"

"Doesn't fit. Yield's all wrong."

"I'm listening, Charlie." _I'm not understanding, but I'm listening._ "Tell me about the cue balls. Stay awake and talk to me, buddy." _What has pool got to do with this mess, besides us being behind the eight ball on this one?_

"Not cue balls. Queueing." Charlie fell silent, his head heavy on Don's shoulder.

"Wake up, Charlie. You had a head injury. Stay awake, buddy."

"Mm."

"Wake up, Charlie. Tell me about the cues."

As promised, the chopper was landing as the horses approached the field. David helped wrestle Charlie down from Don's arms and onto the waiting stretcher. A white-shirted paramedic took one look and gave a thumbs' up _let's move_ sign to the pilot. Moments later Don was in the chopper, watching his brother breathe and praying that he would continue to do so. The ground fell away. David and the horses looked awfully tiny.

"Tell me about the cue balls, Charlie."

No response. Not even a correction. Don bit his lip.

***

Colby was the first to find the casing. It was just one; the sniper had fired a single shot. "Looks the same." He bagged it, using a spare plastic sealable from his pocket. _Never know when an extra would come in handy._ "I'll have it shipped to L.A. for comparison, but I'm betting that this is the same custom job we found before." He glanced over at Rufus. The younger agent had been very quiet during the trek up to the sniper's nest. "You did good, Rufus. Bostwick is alive."

"Yeah." _Could have been me, getting shot. I was part of that group. I was next to Bostwick, too, on the other side._ And, "you think he's going to be okay? Dr. Eppes? Charlie, I mean?"

"I hope so." Colby looked out over the slopes. The trees looked inviting once again, now that the terror was gone. "He didn't look too bad." _Of course, I'm comparing it to Afghanistan, where men died with their body parts blown to oblivion. Yeah, Charlie didn't look too bad compared to that._ He commanded his hands to stop shaking. _Hope to hell I don't get nightmares tonight. Those were supposed to have been left behind with my career in the military._ "There isn't anything more here. Let's check out where he parked his vehicle."

"Did you see him?"

"Charlie? Yeah, I saw him. I pulled him behind a rock so he wouldn't get shot again." It came out harsher than Colby intended.

Rufus flushed, but continued gamely. "No, I'm talking about Dr. Bostwick."

Colby perked up his ears. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Rufus cast around, looking for the way to say it. "I mean, I don't think he was scared."

"Rufus, the guy was screeching like it was him that got shot."

"Yeah, I know, but…" Rufus's voice trailed off. "It was like he was nervous, but not scared. Not scared of being shot. I know that doesn't make sense, but I don't know how to better explain it." He tried again. "The shot was fired. The security guy and me, we grabbed Bostwick and hit the dirt. David was off his horse in an instant. The only reason you and Chief Nogales weren't is that you two were chasing down Charlie and the horses. The rest of us took cover as fast as we could. But Bostwick wasn't. He was prepared to just keep sitting there. He didn't think he was in any danger."

Colby began to see what Rufus was talking about. "Geniuses don't always think the way normal people do. You've watched Charlie. You can't tell me that he's normal."

"Yeah, but Bostwick was screeching about it."

"Like it was an act."

"Yeah." Rufus gave a weak smile. "You think I'm crazy? I'm seeing things?"

"Nope," Colby decided. "I'm thinking that we need to talk to Don."

***

"They're keeping him overnight for observation." Don cut off the inevitable questions. "Concussion, a couple of broken ribs, and the bullet went straight through without nicking any bones or major nerves. He'll be sore for a while, but okay. I'll head back tonight to stay with him." _You don't know how good it feels to be able to say that._

David nodded in relief, and moved in with his assignment. "I ran down the partial license plate and cross-matched it with SUV's in this region of the state; it's registered with a rental agency in the area, and currently rented to a Joseph Smith."

"Why do I think that's not his real name?" Don grunted. "APB?"

"Better than that. I notified the local force, and they swept the parking lots of all three motels in the area. They located it, and are ready to move in on your order." David's smile was grim. "They're looking forward to some action a little more exciting than writing tickets for teens." He cocked his head. "Want to try to make points with Nogales? Invite her to participate?"

Don thought for a moment, thought about how she went after the horses and not Charlie when his brother went down. Thought about how she allowed Bostwick to go out in the open where a sniper could get to him. Thought about how the sniper missed, and took out Don's brother, instead.

His answer was short. "No."

***

The motel was one level, a string of boxes with beds for people passing through. Looking at the one star place, Don felt a stirring of gratitude that Caldwell had put its own set of apartments at the facility at the FBI's disposal. At least the apartment was clean, if not luxurious.

The SUV that Don had seen sat in front of room 133, the curtains in the window drawn. He had the cars move in one by one, quietly, as if more patrons were pulling up rather than the police forces gathering. He wore a bullet proof vest. The locals' vests were dusty but still serviceable. Don hoped they wouldn't be needed, and knew not to count on it. This man had already murdered once, and attempted a second time. He may have missed his target, but didn't negate the fact that he'd done damage. Some of that damage was lying in a hospital bed right now. The sniper had very little to lose.

Don nodded to David and Colby, stationed to either side of the motel room door. Though the locals were present, Don had taken one look and refused to turn over command. Grumbling, Police Chief Mullen caved in, instructing his people to position themselves in the background, guns ready. Granted, some of those guns were more suited to skeet shooting than crowd control, but Don suspected that at least a couple of the local cops could do considerably better than the broad side of a barn. With one last scan to make certain that everyone was where Don wanted them, David reached out and rapped on the door, careful to keep himself clear of any potential shots. "Open up! FBI!"

A scrambling behind the door, but no shots.

"FBI! Open up!"

Colby slammed the ram into the door lock, shattering it and flinging the door back. Men poured past him into the room, yelling and brandishing guns. The man inside never had a chance.

Don followed them in, immediately spotting the outlines of a heavy case between the double bed and the inevitable table and chair by the curtained window. Eyeing the suspect, he flipped open the case. Inside was a high powered sniper's rifle, scope carefully nestled in its own little compartment. A carton of customized bullets sat next to it.

The sniper threat was ended.

He looked the sniper up and down. "Bring him in," he ordered. Don looked again. One corner of his mouth quirked upward. This was, after all, a motel room. "You can let him put on some pants."

***

Don sat across the table from the sniper, now identified as Brad Borowski out of Chicago, also wanted in connection for a series of killings in that area. He leaned back; this was one suspect who wasn't going anywhere fast. When California was finished with him, Illinois would be asking for its share.

"Your gun has been positively identified as the one used to murder Dr. Alyse Halligan, and attempted murder on Dr. Charles Eppes." It felt funny saying that, but Don wasn't laughing. His brother was currently sleeping off a concussion in a hospital bed with a hole in his arm put there by the man sitting across the table from him. "I'd start thinking of what I could offer for a deal, if I were you."

"I want my lawyer."

"You already called him, after you picked him out of a phone book. You know how fast he'll get here. But it won't do any good. You're going down, and you know it. The only question is, how far and how long? I'm willing to bet that you didn't select those two people at random to shoot at. Does the name William Bostwick mean anything to you? Barry Stewart, perhaps? Rosa Nogales?" Don leaned forward. "Whatever you're getting paid for this, it won't mean much after fifty years in San Quentin. Cooperation will go a long way toward my putting in a good word for you with the D.A. I want the guy who hired you."

Borowski looked away. "I've got nothing to say to you."

"Your choice." Dead end, for now. A little time to think could change the sniper's mind. Don was willing to wait. He had other leads to follow up now. "Take him back to holding," he instructed the local cop whose jail they'd taken over for the moment. The cop beamed; Don was willing to bet that this was the first murderer the local cop had ever seen. This local bunch was going to make the most out of it, try to prove that they were real lawmen.

He followed up with his team outside of holding.

"Not going to get anywhere with that guy," was David's opinion. "Not fast, anyway."

"I think you're right," Don admitted. "So what have we got?"

"We've got a murderer," Colby said, "who's off the streets. The slopes. Whatever."

"Yeah, but who was pulling his strings? Whoever it was will be getting desperate. Bostwick is still alive. Anybody think it might be Stewart? He's hurting for money. We need leads, people."

"Don, you need to listen to Rufus," Colby suggested.

"Rufus?" Don turned obediently to the younger man.

The younger man flushed. "I'm not sure."

"Not asking for a signed statement, Rufus. What have you got?"

Another flush. "Like I was telling Colby earlier, Dr. Bostwick is hitting a funny note for me. I mean, on the mountain today he was more nervous than scared. And he was nervous before the sniper hit, if you know what I mean."

"Before? When, before?"

"Like right before. He and Charlie were talking about the fields and the cattle."

"I saw them. Charlie was pointing at something."

"He was pointing at the cattle," Rufus said. "He was talking about how the cattle were bunching up."

"Herd instinct," Colby nodded. "Cattle do that. Horses, too."

"But not like that." Don knew that for a fact, had wondered about it as he'd seen it. Albuquerque was modern, but there were plenty of cattle ranches outside on the range. He thought for several long moments. "Rufus, what's cue ball theory?"

"Huh?"

"Cue ball? Cue something? Charlie was trying to tell me something about cues."

"Queueing theory?"

"That's it. What is it?"

Rufus lifted his hands in bewilderment. "It has to do with the way people line up. Supermarkets do it with cashiers. You can predict which lines will be heaviest at toll booths; people tend to head left, by the way. Stick to the right, and statistics say you'll get through the toll booth faster." He paused. "Am I sounding like Charlie yet?"

"Pretty close," Don assured him. "How does that match up with yield?"

Rufus frowned. "It doesn't."

"It has to. Charlie was talking about them both, in one breath, before he passed out in the chopper. When he woke up in the hospital, he said it again. And then passed out again."

Rufus was unhappy. "I'm sorry, Don. I don't know what to tell you. They don't have any intrinsic connection. Not unless you want to talk about how many cars you can shove through a toll booth per hour." He tried to think. "Maybe Charlie was talking about how much beef a single cow would yield? But how would queueing theory get in there?"

"Maybe he was getting confused," David suggested. "You said he has a concussion."

"Must have been it," Don agreed. It didn't feel right. Charlie had been very insistent through the oxygen mask. Don was willing to admit that nine times out of ten he was clueless as to what Charlie was trying to tell him, but that didn't mean that Charlie didn't know. Or that he wasn't right.

"Wait a minute."

"Rufus?"

"Charlie found some numbers in Dr. Halligan's computer." Rufus got up.

"Rufus?" For Don, that wasn't an explanation.

"I'll be back," Rufus assured Don and the others. "Let me look at those numbers, see how far Charlie got with them." Rufus grinned, his teeth lighting up the room. "I may not be half the mathematician that your brother is, but I can sure try to follow his lead."


	7. Chapter 7

All right, so the Suburban wasn't the best vehicle for picking up banged and bruised little brothers from the hospital. Hoisting him up and into the front seat had been interesting enough that Don vowed to put in an extra fifteen minutes per day on weight lifting. It was either that or get a car with a lower clearance from the ground, and Don hadn't finished paying off this car loan yet.

"I want out," Charlie grumbled, the bandage white around his head. Don hated to look at it; it also meant looking at the bruise that was seeping around Charlie's eye, giving the mathematician a raccoon look. The white sling securing his arm to his chest didn't help.

"I'm getting you out. Sit still. You'll fall if you try to get out of the Suburban by yourself. Wait."

"I can't wait. I have to see those notes of Dr. Halligan's. I have to remember them, Don."

"Have a little patience," Don told him, opening the door to help Charlie slide out of the tall vehicle. He caught his brother easily, alarmed that the man would have hit the ground with his chin if Don hadn't been there. "Hey, take it easy. Look, why don't I take you back to the apartment instead? You could rest. That would be better."

"I don't want to rest. I want to see Halligan's notes. There's something important in them, Don, something that I can't remember." That in itself was frustrating Charlie, that he couldn't remember the numbers that he'd seen.

"Queueing theory, that's what you said," Don reminded him. "That, and something about the yield."

"I did?" Charlie looked so lost that it was heart-breaking. "Don, I can't remember!"

"It's okay, Charlie," Don soothed, grabbing him under the good arm to help him hobble forward toward the front door of the Caldwell research building and inside. "The docs said you'd be like this for a couple of days. It's normal not to remember things right now. It's the concussion. Your memory will come back."

"Maybe not. They said that too, Don." Petulant. Scared.

 _Why was that the part that you had to remember, buddy? The part where the doctors were talking at you._ "Hey, you wanted to be here at Caldwell's, you're here," Don said. "Let's get you to a chair. You're not walking very well."

"I'm walking just fine." Charlie staggered, and would have fallen if Don didn't grab him again.

"Sure, you are, buddy." Don thought swiftly. There was a sofa in one of the empty offices upstairs, just the thing for the stubborn mathematician. And it was accessible by elevator, not a lot of steps and staircases to be negotiated; a definite plus, under the circumstances.

The sofa was still there. Charlie aimed for the chair behind the desk with the computer on top; Don steered him for the sofa.

"Hey," Charlie protested.

"You've got concussion," Don told him. "You need to lie down."

Charlie blinked. This time his knees weren't cooperating, weren't rebounding back after the stagger. "I've got concussion," he finally agreed. His eyes started to roll back into his head. Don grabbed his brother more firmly and eased him onto the sofa, tucking pillows around so that he couldn't accidentally fall off onto the carpeted floor. Charlie groaned a sigh of relief, sinking into the cushions. His eyes closed.

Don looked down at his brother with a mixture of affection and exasperation. He shook his head. "Some things never change, buddy." He winked, even though Charlie couldn't see it. "I'll check back on you."

***

"Got it, Don." Colby came into the conference room where Don was working, trying to put the information together into some sort of coherent whole. So far, Don was having discouraging luck. Papers were spread out in front of him, detailing the various facts and figures and none of them seemed to go together into anything resembling intelligence. 'Frustrating' didn't begin to cover it.

"Good work, Colby." Don didn't care what it was, as long as it was forward movement. "What have you got?"

Colby flashed a piece of newspaper at him. David, farther down the table, leaned over to look. "Xenox Agricultural. Rival company, working on the same sort of stuff. And, look here, about two months ago they were accused of dirty dealings by the FDA. Fudging their data, presenting false information; that sort of thing. They got fined pretty heavily, which took them out of the running for the sort of process that Caldwell is working on. That gave Caldwell an open field."

"Okay," Don drawled, "and how does that help us?"

"'But wait! There's more!'" Colby quoted the unpopular commercial.

"I'm waiting, and I'm not hearing it yet."

"I ran Xenox's employee list. They're not that big, and they're even smaller now that the FDA is through with them. You'll never guess who I found working for them."

"No, I'm not going to guess. Tell me, and get it over with, Colby."

Colby grinned. "Does the name 'Brad Borowski' sound familiar?"

The grin was infectious: it spread to both Don and David.

"Our sniper," David identified it. "How interesting. He works for Xenox?"

"Did," Colby clarified. "The personnel files claim he was terminated a month ago, when the layoffs hit."

Don nodded, pleased. "I'm thinking we need to find out a little bit more about our Mr. Borowski. I'd like to know how he got to be so good with a gun, and who his connections are back at Xenox. Colby, that's your angle."

"Way ahead of you, boss. Brad Borowski, born and bred in North Dakota, expert marksman by the time he was twelve. Took his skills to the U.S. Army where he did as he was told, served his stint overseas, and won several commendations for his sharpshooting. Came back home, didn't like life down on the farm, so he went to the big city and worked for Xenox as one of their low level production techs until he got laid off last month."

"Nice work, Colby. Any speculation as to why he was shooting at Bostwick?"

"Uh…someone knew that he needed the money, now that he was no longer gainfully employed? I think murder pays pretty well when you hire in for the right people."

"I'd rather the blanks get filled in a little bit more, thank you." Don turned to David.

"That looks like my part is coming up," David said.

"Absolutely. With such deductive reasoning powers, you must be an FBI agent."

"I do my best."

"How about sinking your best into Xenox itself, then? See what you can find out about these dirty dealings that Colby discovered."

"I should be able to come up with something pretty quick," was David's opinion. "I've got a couple of contacts that might be of help."

"Really? You've got contacts in the FDA?"

"Yeah." A sideways grin. "We broke up, but it was amicable. We usually get together if I have business in Washington."

"You dog, you." If it worked, it worked. Don was more than happy to take advantage of David's personal life. "Bring it home." He checked his watch. "Better get started. There's a three hour time difference between Washington and here." He looked around. "Anybody hear from Rufus?"

"Right here, boss." Rufus trooped in, looking tired and disappointed, on the heels of Don's words. "Bad news. I can't find the data that Charlie downloaded from Halligan's computer."

"Did you look in that backpack that passes for a briefcase?"

"Yup. Not there. It was a mess. How does he find anything in there?"

"Watch out for the cockroaches," Don warned. "There are times when I think Charlie's trying to prove something about Chaos Theory with that thing. It would be tough to find. Did you look through everything?"

"Every page, and most twice. It's not there, it's not in the pile of papers that Charlie left on top of the desk that they let him use, and it's not in Halligan's office. And, Don," Rufus was very serious, "Halligan's computer was wiped. There's not a shred of data left on it. They wiped it out to the operating system. All I get is the blue screen of death."

"Not good." Because that meant that someone inside of Caldwell didn't want Halligan's data to get out. "Did you talk to anyone about this?"

"Only the people in IT. They swear that they haven't touched Halligan's computer. And they're all vouching for each other."

"They would. Any way to retrieve what was lost?"

"If there is, I don't know it," Rufus admitted.

"How about the mainframe?" Colby asked. "Isn't most of the stuff these guys use stored there?"

Rufus shook his head. "Not this file. Charlie found it on Dr. Halligan's hard drive, which meant it never made it over to the mainframe. He figured out her personal password and found the file by accident. If it contained suspect data, she may have gone to some trouble to keep it off of the internal system."

"And means that the suspect data may have some significance." Don paused to think. "People, why do we think that Bostwick was the target here? Why do we think that the sniper was after him?"

"How about because after the sniper killed Halligan, he came back for more?" David said dryly. "That second bullet came as close to Bostwick as the first one. He's the common factor. Borowski was aiming at him. Bostwick is lucky that Borowski blew it both times."

"Good point. But when we got here, Caldwell had Bostwick under guard. They jumped to the conclusion that he was the target, also. Why?"

Rufus frowned. "He's the head researcher. Without him, there's no process. Caldwell goes under."

"Leaving Xenox alone in the race to develop the miracle growth formula, despite their setback with the FDA. Yes, I got that. But Halligan was working on it, too. Wouldn't she know the process as well as Bostwick? This isn't the days of individual research, or so Charlie tells me. Everything is a team approach, with lots of data collection, so that something like losing a researcher won't be as big a blow."

"But—"

"Think about it, people. This was a sniping. What about simple car accidents? What about heart attacks and similar things that kill people before their time? Caldwell and other research companies don't want to lose everything just because someone doesn't stop at a red light." Don sat back. This had the feel of being right. "We jumped to the conclusion that Bostwick was the target because Caldwell—in the persons of Stewart, Nogales, and Bostwick himself—told us that he was."

"But what about the angle of entry of the bullet that killed Halligan?" Colby protested. "Didn't that—"

"Borowski is good," Don cut him off. "His army records say so. The scope on his piece was enough to put a bullet through the antennae on a housefly, and nobody gets that sort of equipment unless they're already very, very good. I don't care what the angle of entry was. Halligan was the target. Borowski could see both of them through the window, and he aimed for Halligan. This wasn't mistaken identity, or a poor shot."

"Maybe he was after both of them?" David tried for a new hypothesis. "Xenox would want to remove both senior researchers. Borowski shoots Halligan but Bostwick jumps back out of the way before Borowski can off him as well. The second time, out on the slopes, Charlie was next to Bostwick; Borowski misses for real. But that doesn't argue for a very good marksman. Which doesn't go along with what we know about Borowski." He folded his arms, puzzlement uppermost. "You're not trying to say that Borowski was after Charlie, Don? That wouldn't make sense. Charlie has no connection with Caldwell, Bostwick, or Borowski. You know that. They barely knew that Charlie existed until two days ago, and they certainly didn't know that we'd bring him along with us."

"He had no connection before," Don said grimly, "but he does now. He's seen Halligan's hidden data. Charlie's got a reputation among the scientific community; Dr. Bostwick knew who he was, had even attended one of Charlie's seminars. Someone must have known that it would only be a matter of time before he'd decipher what the numbers meant."

"Not any more," Rufus grumbled. "The data is gone."

Don smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "That's what our murderer would like to believe. I know better."

"Don?"

"I have seen," Don said, "my brother recall eight pages worth of data, all numbers, no calculations. He has done this not once, not twice, but at least twelve times that I know of. Mostly to show off, but that's not the point."

"Photographic memory?"

"When it comes to numbers, yes. Forgets everything else, but when it comes to numbers, you can count on Charlie; pun intended. I suspect that we'll be able to retrieve Halligan's secret data."

"Not good enough for court's evidence," David warned.

"No, but by then we should have the rest of the case sewn up. What we need is the direction to go in, what Halligan was looking at. That's the crunch point."

"In other words, what the numbers mean." Colby put it a simpler phrase. "But first, we have to get the numbers."

"And when we get those, we'll have our murderer."

***

"No," said Don in no uncertain terms. "Absolutely not."

"Do you have a better plan?" Charlie asked, tilting his head in a way that Don found infuriating. And he'd bet that Charlie's students found it irritating as well. At the moment, Special Agent Eppes had a certain empathy for them. Rufus sat at the end of the table, stone-faced, watching the two brothers argue. Colby hid his own grin behind a coffee cup.

"News flash, Dr. Eppes," Don told him, "you are not an FBI agent. You don't get to go undercover. Leave the dangerous parts to those of us with the training to handle it."

"It won't be dangerous," Charlie insisted. "You'll be watching, you and David and Colby, and Rufus. All we have to do is pretend that I have the numbers. Your murderer will go after me, and you'll grab him. Piece of cake."

Not dangerous? His brother might be a genius, but had the common sense of field mouse. Just moments before Charlie had hobbled into the conference room to join them, collapsed into his chair with a white face, and looked about ready to pass out again. All that, and his arm in a white sling that clashed with the rest of his outfit, protesting that he felt fine. The white bandage taped to his forehead with dark hair falling over it did nothing to reassure Don, either. Was that blood leaking through? It looked like it.

"We wait," Don said finally. "Your memory might come back. We can figure out who's behind this whole scheme then."

"Or it might not," Charlie argued. "You heard what the docs told me. It's very common to lose twenty-four to forty-eight hours of short term memory with concussion, with only a fifty-fifty chance of regaining it. Face it, Don, I might not be able to recall Dr. Halligan's data. It may be lost forever."

"Better hope not," David muttered under his breath. "We need that data."

Don tossed David an irritated look before focusing back on his brother. "Or it may come back in the next hour," Don argued. "And, frankly, I wouldn't mind telling people that you can't remember. You think I want this murderer thinking you're a threat?"

"He—or she—already does," Charlie pointed out. "I would think you'd want to take advantage of the situation."

"What I want," Don emphasized, "is put a murderer behind bars without anyone getting shot. Again," he growled, glaring. "Think, Charlie. What were those numbers?"

"I can't think. I have a headache."

"I'm sending you home." That sounded nice and safe for a consultant who shouldn't have been shot in the first place.

"A four hour drive back to L.A.? Feeling like this? Not a chance. I'll head back to the Caldwell apartments first."

"No." A lonely apartment, where anyone could find Charlie and kill him without Don being any the wiser? Not in this lifetime. Don knew better. He looked around, scanning the room for ideas, since his brain wasn't coming up with anything…wait. Wait a minute. "No, Charlie, you are staying here. You're going to go back to work, very soon, right here in this research facility. Not yet, but soon."

"You're finally seeing things my way. Give me acetaminophen so I can function. I'll pretend to be a good little victim."

"No, you expect to be working very hard, very soon, right in that office down the hall where the sofa is. You'll be working on the data that you originally pulled out of Halligan's computer, just as soon as we give it to you again. That's what you're waiting for, for David to print it out. Feel free to talk about it to every Caldwell employee you meet on your way back to taking another nap on that sofa."

"Give it to me again? Don, the computer was wiped. I don't remember the numbers—"

"Doesn't matter." Don shoved a piece of paper at Charlie. "Write."

"Don, I—"

"Doesn't have to be accurate, buddy. Just make it look like what Halligan wrote. Set it up in a table or a graph, or whatever she did. Make it believable for a quick glance."

"Huh?" Charlie looked bewildered, and Don patted him gently on the shoulder. The good shoulder. He hated it when Charlie looked bewildered. It happened too often, but not usually over numbers. Usually it was over someone who didn't behave the way the numbers predicted they would: a bully, or some girl who thought making time with a geek would be a nice change of pace until she figured out that college professors didn't have the best financial remuneration in the world. This time it was overlaid with a heavy layer of concussion. Don winced. The concussion shouldn't have happened. Neither should the rest of it, not to a consultant.

David, however, caught on. "Charlie won't be the target, but the computer will."

"Bingo." Yet another example of why Don thought David should be next in line for a promotion. The man was good.

Rufus had a ways to go. "But, if we have the data, won't Charlie have access to it? He'll still be a target."

"Not yet, he won't. Not until he gets 'the data'. And we'll make sure that everyone knows that he doesn't have it yet." Don pointed his finger at the newbie for emphasis. "Whoever is behind this will go after the easy target first, try to slow us down. He'll try to eliminate the data, so that Charlie has nothing to work with. No data, no case. And nobody trying to kill anybody." He considered, thinking how to flesh out his plan. "David, you are now a computer specialist."

"Thanks. I always knew I was good at something. I take it I have magically managed to resurrect the hard drive on Halligan's computer and am now about to merrily print out copies of her hidden data."

Colby caught on. "When, in reality, you are simply inputting Charlie's fake numbers into a spread sheet to make it look like you've accessed the data. Nice. That should generate some action."

"And to make it easier for the suspect, I'll leave the room for several long breaks, so that whoever it is can come in and smash up the place." David nodded, pleased. "I like it. I always wanted to be computer whiz. I can't wait to inform Caldwell's people of my superlative genius."

Don grinned. "Halligan's cat is out of the bag. Go spread the word throughout the litter box, children."

***

"Six pages?" To his credit, the smile stayed frozen on David Sinclair's face. "Don, I flunked keyboarding three times. I hunt and peck at the rate of three words per minute. Charlie wrote six pages to copy!"

"Not a problem," Don said easily. "Not for our computer whiz. Notice that these are numbers. Not words." He grinned. "Only ten digits to work with, not twenty six letters. Look, you've even got a numbers keyboard just waiting for you. Piece of cake. Let me know when you've got it ready to print out." He sobered suddenly. "And remember, bullet proof vest at all times, David. The sniper may be in custody, but we haven't a clue how our unknown suspect will react. He may not wait for you to leave the room to smash the computer; we're only assuming that he will. He may even try to break your fingers so that you can't put in the data. Wouldn't that be fun?" He sauntered off, the grin creeping back onto his face, whistling, putting his plan into action.

David groaned.

***

"You were able to get the information off of Halligan's computer?" The disbelief was plain on Nogales' face. "I thought it was wiped, that the data was gone."

"Well, when you bring along the right experts…" Don let the statement slide off into the distance. "Not easy, but I'm told that it should pop up within another hour or two." Put the pressure on, Eppes. There were several portals for spreading false information, and Don intended to hit every one of them. He didn't want to believe that Nogales was the suspect behind the murders but he hadn't gotten to where he was by letting his emotions get the better of him. He him self had done plenty of things that he really didn't want to admit to… "It shouldn't take long. David is working on it right now, says he'll have it done it a couple of hours. Then I can give the data to Charlie, and we can see what Alyse Halligan was up to." In a flash of inspiration, he added, "we'll be checking out her background thoroughly. Somebody that quiet, you have to wonder." _Not above spreading a little mis-direction either, are we, Eppes?_

"Not Alyse," Nogales said faintly. "Not Dr. Halligan." Which meant, Don realized, that Rosa Nogales was beginning to wonder herself. Which was a good sign; if Nogales was dirty, then she would have been looking to encourage Don to think along other lines. She would have been all but telling Don to dig into Halligan's background. Don started to feel better about the security chief.

Nogales gathered herself together. "Did the sniper crack? He give up his handler?"

"Not yet." The regret was real. "But he will. We're having a polite conversation with Chicago to see who has the better case against him, and, considering that we caught him with the gun used to kill Dr. Halligan in his possession, I think we do. He's been thinking about extradition all night long. He'll be ready to talk before too long, especially if we offer him an incentive." Also true, and also designed to put the pressure on the man—or woman—that was pulling Borowski's strings.

Nogales moved on. "So I can stop the bodyguard for Dr. Bostwick."

"I wouldn't be too quick on that end," Don warned. "Remember, Borowski is a hired killer. There's someone out there who wanted Dr. Bostwick dead." Maybe. Maybe not. "I wouldn't put it past them to try again, some other way."

Nogales nodded ruefully. "I'll back off here, inside, where no one can get to him, but leave the escort back and forth to home intact. Dr. Bostwick has been complaining that he feels crowded, now that you have the sniper in custody."

"No problem here," Don lied. _Bostwick is one of my suspects. Give him rope to hang himself with._

***

Barry Stewart didn't look like a man with millions of dollars in Caldwell stock about to go bust, but then, now that the sniper had been apprehended, it appeared that his investment was safe. His chief researcher was free to continue to develop the process which would net the executive millions in stocks and bonuses. Stewart himself would continue to inhabit the large office in the penthouse with the mahogany desk and the deep pile magenta carpet.

Colby Granger set up a scope on the window sill, looking for a line of sight into the forest where the sniper had set up his nest. The task had absolutely no relevance to the case whatsoever. Talking to Stewart 'off the cuff' did.

"That's right, Mr. Stewart," he said. "Just finishing up a few last details. David'll have the data off of Halligan's computer, Charlie'll do his thing, and we'll be out of your hair before you know it."

Stewart looked up swiftly. Was that alarm that Colby read in those eyes? "I thought that the computer had been wiped."

Colby shrugged. "Yeah, but apparently there's a way to get the information back. David says that it doesn't really disappear, just kind of goes underground where nobody can find it. A little magic on the keyboard and poof! The data's back." He peered out the window at the slopes, looking out toward where the sniper had positioned himself. There was nothing out there except a few cattle munching on bales of hay at the base of the slopes. "Have to admit, I'll be sorry to see this case ending. I like L.A., but I've enjoyed being out here, breathing clean air."

"You'll have to get out here more often," Stewart said absently, his thoughts clearly on other things.

Yup. Definitely a suspect.

***

"I'm sorry, sir, but you have to step back. This is a crime scene," David said politely. He was sitting at the late Dr. Halligan's desk, working on her computer, surrounded by all sorts of textbooks and files and white boards. It reminded him of a tidier version of Charlie's office.

"I just need a notebook from Dr. Halligan's files," Bostwick said with the absolute assurance that he should get what he wanted.

"Sir, you need to step out of the room," David repeated, trying to keep the adrenaline from getting to him. The bullet proof vest which had felt so hot just a moment ago now felt incredibly thin. "At this time, the notebook is considered part of the crime scene. You can't have it."

"But I need it," Bostwick protested, trying to surreptitiously get a look at what David was doing. It looked impressive: David had the cover off of the computer tower, fans whirring and he'd left one of the disk drives open as if to receive a disk. A screwdriver here, a few wires there, and David had transformed himself into a computer geek. As the _coup d'etat,_ he'd left the spread sheet pasted across the monitor, half of Charlie's fake numbers dancing in the boxes for any onlooker to see—and fear. Bostwick did a contrived double take. "You look as though you're having some success with Alyse's computer."

"Yes, sir, I am." David stayed polite, walking the line between officiously ordering Bostwick out of the room and allowing him to catch tantalizing hints of the 'data'. This was the third Caldwell employee he'd 'fended off' in the past hour; both Nogales and Stewart had likewise dropped by to monitor the progress of the FBI 'computer wizard.' If this kept up, David mused, he'd never finish inputting Charlie's 'data'.

"I hadn't realized that a wiped computer could still contain the data," Bostwick continued. "Our IT department certainly wasn't aware that this could be done."

"Very few people are," David replied with a straight face. "Our own IT people are collaborating with both the military and the CIA as well as some of the foremost experts in the field. One of the advantages of the new Homeland Security arrangement." He gestured to the machine. Lights blinked, hinting at the mysteries inside for the expert to tease out. "I should have the download completed within the next thirty minutes." _Whereupon it can be given to our resident math genius, who will decipher just why Alyse Halligan was murdered and who was responsible, or so we would like you to think. Was it you, Dr. Bostwick?_

"Remarkable," Bostwick murmured, working to drag his stare from the computer screen. David dropped one leg across the table where the monitor sat, partially blocking the view with his body, increasing the fear factor and well aware of how he was playing this suspect. A part of him automatically assessed the potential threat: Bostwick was out of shape, and slow. His mind moved at light speed, but the researcher would have to come up with something other than a frontal assault if he wanted to prevent 'Halligan's data' from emerging. David was physically safe, for the moment.

"I won't keep you," Bostwick declared, taking himself to the exit. "We need that information. I'm looking forward to not requiring a bodyguard any longer," he added, as if to remind the FBI agent that Bostwick was a victim and not a suspect.

"Yes, sir." David politely turned back to his 'task'. Every sense he had was focused on the man leaving the office, and not on the computer screen in front of him.


	9. Chapter 9

The elevator doors opened, and Rufus staggered out of the tiny box, putting a hand up against the wall to keep from toppling over. What the hell was wrong with him? He could barely keep his eyes open—

Smoke!

Adrenaline did a wonderful job of driving the sleepies away. Smoke was billowing from under the door to Dr. Halligan's office, the same office that David Sinclair was working in. And Rufus was willing to bet that David had not abandoned his post, certainly not without letting someone know that it was getting a mite stuffy in there.

The door knob to Halligan's office was locked, and hot. More adrenaline: that meant that the fire was inside along with David! Rufus wrenched at the handle, trying to get it to open. No luck; he gave up and opted for the more direct approach. Stepping back, he used strong leg muscles to break the door down.

Smoke poured out.

It was tough to see inside, but what he could make out failed to reassure him. David Sinclair was slumped over the desk, computer parts scattered around him on both the desk and tossed haphazardly onto the floor. Licks of flame danced on the rug, in the trash can, and, Rufus noted with dismay, merrily burning rags had been stuffed into the computer tower itself to melt the innards enough so that even a well-designed rumor couldn't bring Halligan's data back to life.

Dammit, the smoke was getting to him! He could barely see two feet in front of himself, could barely keep his eyes open. It was getting tough to breathe; what the hell was wrong? He'd been exposed to the smokes for only seconds! He staggered, grabbed for the edge of the desk to steady himself, touched the warm flesh of the other agent already unconscious from smoke inhalation.

Drugs.

It came to Rufus Gordon in a dismayed flash: the coffee. It had tasted off. He had drunk a cup, Charlie had drunk a cup, and so, apparently, had David. There was no other way that an arsonist would have been able to wreak this amount of havoc in Halligan's office. There was no way that someone would have been able to overpower the FBI agent on alert against just such a move. Not unless the agent was no longer alert. Not unless the agent had been drugged.

Rufus forced himself awake, fighting against the combined effects of the narcotic and lack of oxygen. In the far distance he could hear a fire alarm going into action, shrieking out its warning. _Little late, dude!_ With failing strength he grabbed David by the arms and wrestled him out of the chair. They ended up on the floor. Each individual muscle in Rufus's body joined in a sit down strike against any further action.

The door seemed a long ways away.

***

It always felt odd for the first few steps after an hour or so on top of a horse. Don and Colby handed off the reins to the stable hands, legs bowed from balancing on top of their mounts. Colby rubbed his backside. "Think the apartment building has a hot tub? I've done more riding in the last twenty four hours than I have in ten years."

"At least a hot shower," Don agreed, "and definitely before dinner. I'm more interested in knowing if David's had any nibbles at Halligan's computer. He didn't call us. Neither did Rufus."

"One of them would have called if anything had happened," Colby agreed. "Maybe nobody took the bait."

Don refused to give in to the doubts. "Has to be an inside job. Halligan didn't have a life outside of work. There's nobody who would want her dead outside of someone at Caldwell with something to hide. Let's go check on him, and how Charlie and Rufus are doing with Halligan's yield data."

"You want to wash up first? We're a little ripe."

Don considered. "We probably ought to. The nice, clean employees inside would probably appreciate it." He sniffed, wrinkling his nose. "Smelled good on the horse."

"And if you were another horse, Sarge would like you a lot more than he already does. Let's compromise, and call our friendly neighborhood FBI agents." Colby pulled out his cell, tapping in the appropriate speed dial setting. He frowned. "No answer. Voice mail picked up."

"Try again." It struck a wrong note. Even if David was in conversation with an employee he would have answered his cell. And the one-sided conversation any visitor would overhear would sound entirely natural for an agent to his team leader.

"Voice mail."

"Let me try. You see if you can get hold of Rufus. Or Charlie." Don tugged his own cell from his belt, thumbing it open.

"No answer here, either."

Neither man needed more data. As one, their steps increased in speed, heading toward the main research building. And when they heard the fire alarm clanging at the facility, they broke into a run.

Stewart and Nogales stopped them at the main entrance. There was a crowd outside; the employees were huddled in small groups, having been herded outside by the fire alarm.

"You can't go in there," Nogales said. "The firemen are here. They're handling it. We're getting everyone out."

"It's not a large fire," Stewart assured them, "but with all the chemicals we have inside we have to be careful. We don't want any explosions."

Don wasn't reassured. "Where are my people?"

Nogales glanced around automatically. "I don't see them. They must be on the other side of the building."

Large alarms were going off, and the alarms weren't just inside the building. They were erupting in Don's consciousness. "My people are inside."

"No, they're not. They're on the other side of the building. Go check; we have twelve different entrances. Everyone has exited the building." Nogales put a restraining hand on his chest. "Do a circuit around the perimeter. You'll find them. They're somewhere outside."

Don brushed it away. "They're not answering their cells," he ground out. "They're inside, and they're in trouble." Don never knew anything so clearly in his life.

"You can't go inside," Nogales argued.

"Watch me."

It took only seconds to get past the fire chief, a grizzled man with a very sensible attitude toward federal agents: _let 'em have their way even if it gets them killed. No skin off my nose._ He did assign a couple of men with oxygen tanks to follow Don and Colby inside, ready to drag their lifeless bodies out if something went boom with the agents in the lead. Don didn't care. He had three people inside, _including my brother!,_ and couldn't get hold of any of them.

"Where's the fire?" he shouted at the man at the main entrance.

"Fourth floor." The fireman was maddeningly calm. "Somebody's office. The dead woman, I think. The crime scene place."

As Don had feared. This fire was no accident. There was a reason he couldn't get hold of David or Rufus. Charlie he'd expect not to hear a bomb go off next to his ear when he was playing with numbers but the two professionals would answer their phones if they possibly could. Which meant that they couldn't. Which meant that they were in trouble.

Don burst onto the fourth floor from the stairwell, Colby in his wake. They were stopped by the senior fireman on the scene. "You can't go down there."

"My people—!"

"Right there." The man pointed. "He pulled the other one out. He'd be dead by now if your man hadn't gotten to the other guy. Don't know how he did it. Smoke was pretty thick."

Rufus was half-awake, propped up against the wall, holding an oxygen mask against his face, gasping for breath. Even as Don looked, Rufus put up a weak hand to wave in acknowledgment that his boss was present. David couldn't manage that: he was down for the count, oxygen strapped to his face, being lifted onto a stretcher in preparation for a hasty retreat accompanied by the four husky fire-fighters carrying him and the stretcher.

Where was Charlie?

"No one else in the office," the fireman reported.

Don stared at him, hadn't realized that he'd asked the question aloud. "He's up one flight."

"Then he got out, maybe out the back. The smoke's still pretty thick on this floor and the next, but the fire itself was contained in this one office. The place is a mess. Nobody else was in any danger, just the pair in this office with the smoke. If your other guy was upstairs, then he left with the rest of the employees."

A quick look inside Halligan's office confirmed the fireman's diagnosis, but that still left Don one brother short. The computer tower in particular was a mess. "Stay with them," he ordered Colby. "I'm going to look for Charlie."

"Don?"

"Stay here," Don repeated. "Don't let David or Rufus out of your sight. There's a murderer on the loose. Somehow I don't think the computer caught on fire by accident."

"Don." This time it was Rufus, trying to keep his eyes open behind his own oxygen mask. "Don!"

"Rufus?" Don squatted beside the man.

Rufus clutched at Don's shirt. "Don, you have to go after Charlie! We were drugged! That's how he got to us!"

Don didn't need to hear any more. His worst fears had just been confirmed. He ran.

It was hard to see in the smoke-filled corridor, and unfamiliarity with the hallway didn't help. Which office had they stashed Charlie and Rufus in? They all looked alike. It was like a copier was spitting out identical offices and lining them up along the corridor, each with a plastic name tag to identify the usual occupant. Charlie's hadn't said anything; it was an office meant for a new hire and temporarily vacant. Two other offices weren't identifying much either; the plastic tags had started to melt under the heat. Don coughed, the smoke crawling into his lungs as well. He coughed again.

There it was, the office he'd left Charlie in. The door was closed; good, keep the smoke out. Rufus had done that much. But the power was off, the computer shut down, and Charlie wouldn't have been able to do anything. Where was he? Out on the far side of the research facility, sitting down on the ground somewhere? Please, please let his brother be safely outside.

Check it out. Don itched to pull his revolver out of his shoulder holster, knew that it was merely an instinctive response to danger. Charlie wasn't here, he'd been shuffled outside by conscientious firemen. He wasn't there. He wasn't inside that office, fuming over the lack of power to the computer.

Don eased open the door, as cautious as if there was a psychotic killer inside.

Muffled thrashing.

"Die, dammit! Die, already!" A voice full of anger and despair.

Damn good instincts. Don's pistol was in his hand in a flash, his left covering his right for stability. He kicked the door open the rest of the way, hearing it bang against the wall with a satisfying crash.

"Freeze! FBI!"

There were two people in the office, only one that he had to worry about. That one was busily engaged in holding a plastic bag over the other's face, suffocating him. The suffocatee, arms flailing helplessly and trying to remove not only the bag but the hands holding it in place, had distinctive dark and curly hair. Not much else could be seen from underneath the bag, but Don didn't need a second look.

"Get away from him! Now!"

William Bostwick cringed, knew that it was over. Frontal style assault was not his style. Sneaking up on a drugged consultant was. He stepped away, letting his arms droop to his sides, beaten. There was nothing for him to say, nothing to be done. It was over.

***

"Charlie! You okay?" Don's job was to keep his eyes on his suspect, so that the man didn't make another move. So that the man didn't try to kill again.

But Bostwick wasn't going anywhere. He was beaten. Don sneaked a quick look at his brother.

"Mmph." Gasp for air, with just enough vocalization in it to let Don know that his brother, although unhappy and oxygen-starved, was alive.

"Charlie?"

"Nice timing." This time Charlie actually managed to put words into his exhalation. "What happened?" His voice slurred off.

Another look. Rufus was right: heavy duty narcotics had taken the edge off the keen intellect flopped in a chair, the plastic bag that Bostwick had tried to use floating down from his good hand to the rug.

Smoke was still creeping in. Getting both perpetrator and victim out in one piece was a priority. "Charlie? Can you walk?"

"Been…doing it…for years…"

Excellent. _Time to move, Eppes._ Handcuffs went onto Bostwick— _not letting you escape this one, slime!_ —and Don pulled Charlie out of the lounge chair by the good arm. Charlie protested, the words all but incoherent. It didn't matter; they needed to get out of here now. Don draped Charlie's good arm around his shoulders, ignoring the stagger in his brother's gait, and pushed Bostwick forward with the barrel of his gun. "Move it, Bostwick. Unless you want to burn up."

***

"Hustle it," Don growled at Bostwick, giving the man a hurry up push with the pistol to speed him through the door to the stairwell out into the main lobby. Charlie was getting heavier and heavier in Don's arms. Adrenaline had fueled his brother's forward momentum for the first two flights of stairs— _so glad we're headed down, and not up!_ —but that had passed into oblivion. Charlie's head drooped lower and lower onto Don's shoulder and Don wasn't about to take bets that he could keep his brother on his feet all the way through the front door. "C'mon, Charlie. Wake up. You can do it."

"'M walking." Charlie jerked his head up, trying to stay awake. "Ow. Watch it," he added with all the indignation he could muster. It wasn't much; the drugs had damped down every sensation except for the throbbing in his arm. Not fair, he thought with what was left of his fading thoughts. One knee tried to give out. Don hoisted him back onto his feet.

The main door. Another minor outpouring of gratitude that it had been propped open. Bostwick staggered out through the exit, hands still cuffed behind his back and Don, Charlie in his arms, pushing him through.

Dammit, need some assistance with these two! Colby was already speeding away in the ambulance with David and Rufus, unavailable. Nogales? Where is she? No, wait, there's Police Chief Mullen, obnoxious piece of bigoted slime but with authority and knowing his job. "Mullen!" Don yelled. "A little help over here—"

Crack!

Bostwick fell. Don took Charlie to the ground, ignoring the yelp that the move ignited, rolling them into the bushes and less than ample cover. But it had only been a single shot. A sniper's shot.

A single shot that took Bostwick right between the eyes.

***

It took a surprisingly short period of time to clean up the crime scene. CEO Stewart very sensibly dismissed his employees and sent them all home and out of the way. Somehow, no one felt like working after seeing their chief researcher fall dead to the ground, eyes rolling sightlessly back into his head and blood and brains squirting out from the brand new hole he'd acquired in his skull. No one felt like working after realizing that their stock options, part of their generous benefits package, were all but worthless now that not just one but both primary researchers were dead. Every single employee was strongly considering updating their resume for the remainder of the work day.

That decision not to sell off the stock a couple weeks ago when the rumors first started didn't seem so smart now.

Don had a few higher priorities on his hands. Priority number one was persuading his brother that lying on a stretcher was a better choice than falling onto the ground and, incidentally, re-injuring his arm with the gunshot wound.

"I don't want to go back to the hospital," Charlie protested feebly. "I was already there."

"See? It'll be like home. You already know what it looks like."

"Not funny, Don. I don't need to go there."

The eyes were closed, but the mouth stayed open and babbling. Why couldn't it be the other way around? Eyes open and mouth closed? Fortunately, Don had the upper hand, literally. He lowered his brother to the stretcher, Charlie's knees turning to un-refrigerated gelatin once the support known as Big Brother was removed. Charlie had no choice: between the drugs, his brother, and the ambulance attendants, he was going. Don called on Police Chief Mullen once again, prevailing upon him to assign an extra cop to the ambulance just in case the second sniper decided to derail the emergency vehicle. This was getting annoying; the sniper was already in custody! Who was this new one who had just killed Bostwick?

Colby was next. A swift phone call clued in the younger agent, who promised to watch over Charlie as well as the other two FBI agents.

"You going to be okay out there alone, Don?" was Colby's concern.

"I've got three people down," Don replied grimly. "You stay there. How are David and Rufus?"

"Rufus is waking up. Doc says it'll be a while before they can identify what drug he and David were given. David's snoozing still, but coughing from all the smoke. Doc says he'll be hacking up a smoker's lung for the next week. They're both sucking down oxygen like beer."

"Great. They can add Charlie's blood to the mix and compare. Let 'em know that those tests will be used for part of the Prosecution's case. Dot the I's and cross the T's kind of stuff."

"You want me back as soon as the local cop arrives?"

"Yes," Don started to say, then interrupted himself. "No. Stick close to our people. We've still got another sniper out there, and the target really was Bostwick. I don't know where this case is going. I could have sworn, after seeing Bostwick go after Charlie, that he was our man. That those yield numbers of Charlie's were what pushed him over the edge. I thought that we'd closed the case when I pulled Bostwick off of Charlie. I was wrong, Colby. And I won't let anyone else be hurt because of it. Bostwick may have been a murderer, but he shouldn't have died. He was in my custody."

"What are you going to do?"

"Same thing as always. Investigate."

***

"Going somewhere?"

Rosa Nogales nearly jumped out of her skin. "Don! You startled me."

"Oh, it's 'Don', is it?" Don kept his voice steady. There was no echo in the tiny Security office, and the only light was from the fluorescent bulb overhead. The framed certificates Nogales had won for marksmanship and martial arts had already been taken down from the wall. "It's always been 'Special Agent Eppes' up until now." He eyed her coldly, looking at the papers in her hand, the box on her desk filled with small items. Just the type of box to hold small memento's for someone who had just been fired. Or someone making a hasty exit without benefit of two weeks' notice. "Care to tell me why?" He didn't mean the name.

"Why? I've let too much stuff accumulate in here. It's time to do a little house-keeping—"

"I'm not a fool, Rosa." Don moved to let the pistol show at his hip. The meaning was clear. Special Agent Eppes knew everything. "I should have guessed when we picked up Borowski. Bostwick didn't have those connections. The man didn't have the first clue as to how to hire a hit man, and Borowski wasn't even a real hit man. You had those connections, through the military. You knew Borowski was hurting for money, and you put this scheme together. Why?" Don repeated. "What did you get out of killing Alyse Halligan and Bill Bostwick?"

Rosa Nogales' eyes hardened. "Alyse was getting too close." It was the first admission that Nogales had done anything wrong, and there was no going back. "Another week, and Bill and I could have sold our stock and retired to some island to live as kings. Another week, and the rumors would have gone out, and stock prices would have sky-rocketed. But Alyse guessed the truth. And then Bill panicked. He would have given us both away; no thought for me." Rosa clenched her jaw. "Alyse took her own readings, didn't she?"

Don nodded. "She hid them in her computer."

"And your brother found them," Rosa said bitterly. "I wish Borowski hadn't missed. One less problem to deal with. Instead, he figured out what the true yield of K-19 was. How?" she asked. "I wiped that computer. There was nothing left. There were no numbers to pull out of that computer after I was through with it. How?"

Don grunted. "You almost got away with that part of it. You almost wiped Charlie's brain with concussion. Not quite lucky enough, though. Charlie has a way with numbers. In case you hadn't noticed."

Nogales tightened her jaw. "Now I really wish that Borowski hadn't missed. Damn idiot. Give him the best equipment there is, and he still couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. And got caught with his pants down, as well. I should have killed Borowski myself. He's lucky you found him as soon as you did."

"And you?" Don wasn't finished. "What did you get out of this? How much did Bostwick pay you to arrange this little charade? And why did you kill Bostwick? What hold did he have on you? Was he blackmailing you into this?"

It wasn't words. It was the look of naked fury that gave it away.

"You and he," Don realized flatly. "I should have guessed. And still you killed him. How long was it going on?"

"What, you don't think a big man like Bill could go for a little wetback like me?" Nogales sneered wildly. "Let me tell you, he was hot for me. He couldn't keep his hands off of me! Not like that frigid wife of his. He wanted me, not like those idiots in town. Not like the ones who look at me every time I walk into the grocery store and laugh and point. 'Little Mexicana, go back to your own side of the border.'? Well, I've got news for you, gringo: this is my side of the border! I fought for this country! I served! I have a right to be here, even more than you! How about you, gringo? Did you ever fight for your country? Do you deserve to live here, gringo?"

"I'm fighting for it right now." Don wished that he had his handcuffs in his back pocket. The bracelets were currently part of State's evidence, still manacling Bostwick's dead hands together until the local coroner could finish the autopsy. Don could think of a better use for them, something, say, like getting this spitfire under control. "I'm upholding the law. You remember that one? The one that talks about murder?" Time to finish this. "Are you going to come quietly with me?"

Special Agent Eppes should have known better. Nogales had learned to fight both fair in the martial arts dojo and dirty on the street. There were no weapons at hand, so she made do with what she had. Nogales grabbed the cup of pencils and paper clips and flung it at him.

The detritus acted like dirt, aimed straight for his eyes. Don yelped in surprise and covered his face to protect himself. In the intervening moment, Nogales dove at him. It was her only chance: a sudden attack to get her opponent off balance and escape.

Don had spent too many years in Fugitive Recovery. A sudden attack meant only one thing: that the perp was on the move. One hand went up to protect his face from the flying paper clips, the other swung around to guard against the very move that Nogales was trying for. He blocked, knocking Nogales' arm away.

Nogales had speed; Don had power. And Don had one more thing: a cold and unrelenting anger over two dead Caldwell bodies and three more barely breathing ones in the hospital with FBI labels. He used it to fuel his own speed. The next strike from her he grabbed and twisted, pulling Nogales into a hold that could only be broken with sheer strength. Strength that Nogales didn't possess.

"Let me go!" she shrieked. "Let me go!"

"Give it up!" he snarled into her ear. "You're done! Dammit, do you want me to break your arm?"

"Let me go!" Nogales insisted. "You have to let me go! You can't put me in jail!" She collapsed, no longer fighting him, no longer trying to escape. Sobbing. "I can't go to jail! Not there!"

Don stared. The last piece came clear. "You're pregnant with Bostwick's child!"

Damn.

***

"I'm not looking forward to the drive home," Charlie informed his brother, crawling painfully into the back seat of the Suburban, allowing Rufus to give him a helpful arm up the high step.

"I'm not looking forward to four hours or more of you either," Don retorted. "Couldn't they give you more drugs to knock you out for the whole thing? Easier on both of us. And if you throw up in the truck, you're cleaning it up."

Charlie ignored the threat. He tried—and failed—to find a comfortable position that would still take advantage of the inherent safety offered by the seat belt. "I get Rosa Nogales' motive: she loved Bill Bostwick. That kind of love I can put up with not having." He shuddered. "She killed him, intending to protect her child from being born in jail. But you still haven't explained why Dr. Bostwick did what he did."

"Yes, I did. You weren't there."

"You forced me to go to the local Emergency Room."

"Standard procedure, buddy, for incapacitated FBI agents. You were drugged. I sent Rufus and David, too. You should have heard the things you were saying while they strapped you onto that stretcher." Don chuckled for effect.

"Yes, but I'm not an agent." Charlie paused. "What did I say?"

"You don't remember?" Don was an expert at interrogation. He'd had several years of practice. Don was also an expert at teasing his brother; he'd had close to thirty years of practice at that. "Something about Amita? Tight pants?"

"Don!"

Rufus, having placed himself in the front passenger's seat, swiveled around so that he could observe both brothers. "I wouldn't mind a repeat," he offered, playing truce-maker. "Whatever it was that Bostwick put in that coffee, it was a kicker. You were talking, Don, but it was all I could do to keep my eyes open."

"You didn't keep your eyes open," Don informed the younger agent with a grin. "The only people I got to talk to were Colby, Mr. Stewart, and Police Chief Mullen. Listen carefully, children: Bostwick was our man, all along. He wanted the money; he was planning to sell his Caldwell stock to get it and then skedaddle out of the country with Nogales. But there were already serious rumors floating around that Formula K-19 was a bust, rumors that both Bostwick and Nogales knew were true. He knew they were true because he was the prime designer of Formula K-19. He needed some way to make those rumors sound false, which would drive up the Caldwell stock price, so that he could sell at a profit and get out from under fast. There was an off-shore tropical island in his future with a raven-haired Latina beauty to keep him company. A place where American authorities couldn't touch him or her."

"But Dr. Halligan was in the way." Charlie kept his eyes closed and his mind open. Don tried to ignore the lines in his brother's face. It was tough. Recovery would take more than a mere few hours.

"Halligan was in the way. Bostwick was falsifying his yield data, and the only one who knew that was Alyse Halligan. She had to go. Bostwick went to Nogales. Nogales hired a hit man by the name of Borowski—I've put Colby on that little detail to see if we can find out exactly how Nogales found him—and told him to take out Halligan. As a cover, they made it seem as though Bostwick himself was the target. Just to confuse the issue. No one expects the victim to take out a contract on himself."

"It worked. I'm still confused. Why did they go after Charlie? Didn't they realize that it would look suspicious?" Rufus asked.

"That was Bostwick. He was scared," Don said. "Scared people do stupid things. When you and Charlie stumbled across Halligan's hidden data, Bostwick knew that it was only a matter of time before Charlie put the figures together and discovered that it was the true yield data. And that would ruin the rest of his plans. His stock would plummet like a rock. He didn't realize that Rosa Nogales was already getting into position to wipe the computer. So Bostwick maneuvered Charlie out into the open where Borowski could take a shot at him and make it seem like Bostwick himself was the intended target. You were the one who gave me that clue, Rufus. You commented that Bostwick seemed nervous, but before the shooting. Things were a little too busy to pay attention at that time, but your instincts were right on the money. Good work."

"So by killing me…" Charlie let the line trail off with a little shiver.

"He would prevent anyone from discovering their deception." Don finished. "Of course, that wasn't right, either. Remember cue ball theory?"

"You're talking to two mathematicians," Charlie grumbled. "What about queueing theory? The cows weren't following what the theory said they should be doing."

"Exactly. Why not?"

"I'm a mathematician, not a veterinarian. Why not?" Charlie repeated. He adjusted the sling on his arm uncomfortably.

Don grinned. "You pointed out the discrepancy, and it cracked the case. The cows only went after the bales of hay that were grown with Formula K-19. They didn't line up equally at the bales of hay, only for those with the tasty formula. And it acted like a drug for them. They were addicted, and very cranky toward anyone getting between them and their K-19 hay fix." He suppressed a shudder, remembering the horns that had swung toward him while taking samples in the presence of those cattle. "If that data ever got out, the formula would be finished, no matter what the yield was. Caldwell—and Bostwick—would be ruined."

"And now they're finished anyway," Rufus pointed out. "No formula, no researchers, and a lot of stock not worth the paper it's printed on."

Don turned on the engine, waving at Colby in the other SUV, a still gray and wan David beside him in the passenger's seat. David too had spent an uncomfortable night in the ER, pouring oxygen into smoky lungs, right next to Charlie and Rufus, and was ready to go home and crawl under some familiar bed covers. "Not our problem. Sometimes research doesn't pan out. You don't fix it by lying. Or by killing your researchers. One thing that still bothers me, though: trajectory of the bullet that killed Halligan. Doesn't seem to work for me. I still don't see how those casings ended up where they did, given that Halligan was the actual target and not Bostwick." Don shrugged that detail off and moved on. That particular little detail wasn't important. Lots of things in the world didn't work out as they were supposed to. "Rufus, how'd you like working with Charlie? Learn anything?"

"Learned a lot," Rufus said fervently. "I think you're lucky to have him." He took a deep breath. "And I don't think I could do the same thing that he does. I don't have the background, or," he added honestly, "the talent. What are you going to tell Area Director Thomas?"

Don grinned. "The truth, Rufus. Just exactly what you said, with one addition: that you're a damn fine agent. It took guts to go after David to try to haul him out of that office. If you hadn't opened the door to Halligan's office, he'd be dead from smoke inhalation. Your work on horseback was commendable and would have saved Bostwick's life if he had been the actual target. And, more importantly, you noticed Bostwick's behavior. You may not have Charlie's talents, but you've got plenty of your own. You'll be a welcome addition to A.D. Thomas's staff."

"Thank you, sir."

"Though I think you may have witnessed the first mistake with numbers that I've ever seen Charlie make."

"Mistake?"

"Yeah. Bullet trajectory. What was it? Something about ballistics?"

"Yes, well, there's always a first time." Charlie kept his voice even and his eyes closed. Rufus looked straight ahead, hoping that his hair covered enough of his ears to keep the red from shining forth. Charlie relaxed against the side of the Suburban, struggling to find a comfortable spot for everything that ached. It wasn't easy. "And I do so make mistakes. Frequently. You just don't see them."

"Like I said: lot of stuff you can learn from Charlie, Rufus. Lot of stuff." Don turned his attention to the road, a small smirk playing around his lips. And refused to say another word for fifty miles.


End file.
